The End of the Line has been cropping up on blogs and news sites, and is receiving some very positive feedback.
Recent comments on the film and the campaign have appeared on the Washington Post, California Chronicle, Spear’s WMS (Wealth Management Survey) and Whole Food Market’s blog. Here is a round-up of the coverage the film is receiving.
Charles Clover answers questions about the film and it’s message for the Washington Post’s All We Can Eat food blog.
Asked whether it is too late to save the oceans, he replies: “No. But part of the problem is that people still believe we live in a world of plenty. The world of plenty in terms of fish disappeared in 1988, and we haven’t caught up with that fact yet.”
He goes on to deal with the issue of farming carniverous fish: “It takes five pounds of little fish to grow one pound of salmon. And actually those fish, like Peruvian anchoveta and blue whiting, eat very nicely. So why don’t we eat the little fish?”
In an opinion piece for Spear’s WMS, William Sitwell, Editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated, writes: “While those in the food world and others who know and care about the plight of depleting fish stocks have been talking about this for ages, sometimes you need to get something onto the telly to get people to pay attention.”
Whole Story, the Whole Foods Market blog, has a review by Carrie Brownstein, which has generated some debate amongst readers. She says: The film begins with beautiful footage of marine life and quickly (and graphically) moves toward its key message: The oceans are overfished and fish populations are in trouble.”
John Mitchell, writing in the California Chronicle, considers the the social implications of the need to curb overfishing:
“One of the most fascinating passages of the film . . . takes a look at the coast of Africa, which is being overfished by foreign - specifically European - boats. This has decimated not only the sea but also the livelihood of local fishermen, who now have nothing to catch.
“Colonialism is dead officially, but its ghost continues forward in the form of sucking up resources - the fish depletion is a direct contributor to the current pirate problem that’s making the headlines, pushing once-working fishermen into a life of crime in retaliation.”
What saddened Amanda Rappak the most, in the Green Living blog, was the inability of governments to “penetrate the complex fish market system with effective enough controls that would actually limit how much fish is caught”.
She also highlighted the film’s positive message: “The film offers avenues for taking action with its campaign, and so does Greenpeace. But it seems the first step to change would begin with a personal pledge to always knowing exactly where your food comes from and how it reached your plate.”
The Enviro blog at Huck Magazine cites the support the film is getting: “The film which was selected for the Sundance Film Festival this year has gathered international support from organisations such as WWF, and well known faces such as broadcaster Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, also offers simple solutions we can all adapt to help prevent such a tragic future.”
Writing in the 1Click2Fame blog, Annabel Harrison says: “After watching the film, I realised that we should be doing so much more to protect what is one of the biggest natural sources of food for humans. The positive aspect of this global issue is that it’s not too late – there is plenty we can do to make sure that species don’t become extinct.”
On her blog, Regency Life in the 21st Century, Kimba writes : “We forget that these waters are also our to maintain, protect, and sustain. How? By eating only sustainable seafood. By helping politicians understand there needs to be protected areas where fishing is illegal. By getting the word out! There is a great new book and film “The End of the Line” that will tell you more.”
Last week’s big development on the film was recording the narration for The End of the Line with the American actor Ted Danson, best known for his leading role in Cheers and his frequent appearances on the cult series Curb Your Enthusiasm.
He recently reinvented himself with his layered portrayal of a complex Enron-era fraudster in the legal thriller, Damages.
Ted has a long and distinguished record campaigning for the oceans and he told us that when he saw the film, he was thrilled: he felt that it told the complete story of over-fishing in a dramatic and accessible way.
He very generously took a day out of his demanding filming schedule for a new HBO series to come to a recording studio in New York’s Greenwich Village to record the narration.
He also gave us a filmed interview, which we will be using to promote the film and the issues it raises - and which we will put on the website. We are now outting his voice over on the film, ready for the release on June 8th.
Well, we are just back from the Sundance Film Festival and what it all means is only just beginning to sink in. The audiences loved our film, which warns that this may be the end of the line for fish in the world’s oceans, unless we take care. All our screenings were packed and followed by spirited Q&As.
Rupert Murray is interviewed for Italian television
Perhaps the most gratifying were the two screenings in Salt Lake City because the audiences were made up of members of the public - one was before 200 High School children who asked the best questions of the festival.
Number one, from a 16 year old boy, “Will there be fish to eat when I’m a grandfather?” Good question.
Being so close to the subject for so long, it was easy for us to forget just how shocking and how surprising the story of what is going on in the sea is to most people.
Even the questioner who said he knew most of the facts fell silent when we told him that in the week we arrived there was a piece in Science linking the depletion of fish in the world’s oceans with global warming, and confirming our worst predictions about the sea.
Ours was a very big subject indeed. We hope we have done it justice. Certainly our audiences thought we did.
At the time of writing I am making last minute preparations to go to Sundance after a marathon two years of production and post-production of our ocean epic The End Of the Line. We only finished last week.
About two and half years ago I picked up a book called The End of The Line by Charles Clover in an airport lounge (a moment I have replayed many times in my mind since. Sometimes during the harder periods of production I wished that I had chosen the romantic novel sitting next to it).
I was on the way to Los Angeles to talk about making my previous doc into a feature and when I got off the plane I knew I had to make this book into a film and I put the feature on hold.
It was the film about the oceans I always had wanted to make but until that time no one had put all the pieces together in such an elegant, devastating and coherent way.
It has been an incredible experience for the whole Fish Team, myself included, to have worked on a film that we believe and hope will have a real impact on how we treat our seas.
The End Of The Line asks quite a hard question – how is it possible that 3.5 billion years of evolution in the sea could be extinguished in a single human lifetime?
Are we really going to see the end of wild fish in the sea over the next half century?
The Hollywood pitch for our film would be ‘The Blue Planet meets a lie detector test’. That film and many other natural history films about the oceans perpetuate a myth about the sea that is simply untrue – that life exists untouched by man. Continue reading ‘Preparing for the Sundance Film Festival’
