Behind "THE COVE" : Challenging Academy-Winning Film

In the just opened 39th Montreal World Film Festival, a Japanese documentary film challenges the Academy Award-winning film "The Cove". The documentary is titled "Behind 'The Cove'" produced by Ms. Keiko Yagi, 48, of Japan. Ms. Yagi is to give a presentation on September 4 in which she wishes to appeal to the world Japan's unique food culture.

The film "Behind 'The Cove'" is entered in the documentary division of the festival. Ms. Yagi had worked for a major US film company and left it to set up a film production company of her own. This is her first film and it is brilliant that she challenges a world famous film festival with her maiden work.

The American film "The Cove" takes a critical look at dolphin hunting in the town of Taiji and won the Academy Award in 2010. Ms. Yagi says she felt a sense of danger then of the way the film describes dolphin hunting and of how it won the Academy Award. She felt the film would give to the world a totally distorted image of Japan's food culture and tradition of whaling. That sense of danger prompted her to produce "Behind 'The Cove'".

Ms. Yagi moved to Taiji last year and spent four months there. She filmed scenes of the anti-whaling Sea Shepherd pressurizing local fishermen and interviewed the producer of "The Cove" and leading characters appearing in the film. Ms. Yagi also interviewed veteran fishermen who had whale-hunted in the Antarctic in postwar years and also government negotiators to make her film "Behind 'The Cove'" .

Ms.Yagi points out: "Overseas activists are pressurizing Japan's whaling out of sheer emotional impetus. If one considers environmental balance, it is totally unreasonable to protect any specific animal. Strifes never cease unless one pays respect to another's food culture and religion".