Summary: Filmwax host, Adam Schartoff, attended the 2013 season of True/False, a documentary film festival located in Columbia, MO. This was the 10th season for the festival. This interview with BLACKFISH director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite is one of several interviews during his stay. SYOPSIS: Even in captivity, orcas, the largest predatory mammal in the world, grow as large as 12,000 pounds. While our popular imagination is filled with the likes of Shamu and company at Sea World, the footage in this film reveals a much more harrowing history—that of Tilikum, a captive orca responsible for at least two human deaths. In her directorial debut, Gabriela Cowperthwaite amasses a trove of amateur footage shot by former Sea World trainers and combines it with interviews to paint a damning portrait of how these parks treat large sea mammals. It’s a careful, well-reasoned argument, given additional power by the eye-popping footage and thrilling narrative of Tilikum, the killer whale. Gabriela Cowperthwaite is a documentary filmmaker who for more than 12 years has directed, produced and written a variety of real life stories, including Blackfish, a feature documentary currently selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. She has directed, written and produced for ESPN, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery, and History Channel, including History Channel’s “Shootout!” a series for which she and a cameraman were embedded with 300 Marines at Twenty Nine Palms, and “Disaster Tech,” a documentary series about the biggest natural disasters in world history. Gabriela just finished Directing, Producing and Writing City Lax: An Urban Lacrosse Story. The film, for which Gabriela was immersed in the inner-city for 8 months, chronicles the lives of six 12-year-olds as they and their families struggle through middle school in their gang-ridden neighborhoods. After winning multiple Audience Awards on the festival circuit, the film was acquired by ESPN and DirectTV. In 2009, Gabriela completed a medical film for UCLA International Medicine in conjunction with the International Rescue Committee, teaching doctors in Darfur, Sierra Leone, Thailand and Pakistan, Clinical Management of Assault. The film focuses on clinics in war-torn regions, with the emphasis on providing ground-breaking medical care for victims of violence. It is being translated into 3 different languages and will be distributed in 8 countries. She is currently directing a campaign for Supply and Demand, a commercial directing agency based in New York and Los Angeles.
