Sundance Film Festival: Prize-winning film 'The Cove' has lofty goal of saving dolphins

Can a film save the world?

Perhaps not, but the makers of "The Cove," which won the Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award Saturday for the most popular U.S. documentary, are using their film in an effort to save a single tiny body of water in the Japanese town of Taiji.

It is a town with a secret the filmmakers are trying to expose to the world with Hollywood special effects and "Ocean's Eleven"-style espionage. By its fourth screening at Sundance, the film had received four standing ovations and the Sundance people were on the phone trying to schedule another screening.

More impressive, viewers were galvanized by the documentary and the usual questions such as "How did you do that?" were replaced with questions like "What can we do?"

Front and center in the film is the world's most famous dolphin trainer, Richard O'Barry, who captured and trained the animals used in the television show "Flipper." When his lead animal Kathy died in his arms, taking a final breath and sinking to the bottom of her tank, he was finished with sentient mammals in captivity.

The next day he was arrested for cutting a dolphin loose and virtually every day since has been focused on stopping the industry he helped create.

"At first I was motivated by guilt, but now it's just like breathing," he told the Deseret News.

He contends that sentient mammals are stressed and hurt by captivity and says the claims of educational and preservation benefits espoused by captive animal corporations are mere advertising slogans. Their sole motivation is financial, he says.

So when filmmakers trying to make a beautiful oceanic film, led by director Louie Psihoyos, found O'Barry stalking a secret cove as the lone person trying to put a stop to its hidden decimations of thousands of dolphins annually, they discovered a whole new film.

O'Barry has spent about six years at this cove, trying to get anyone else to care about his cause.

"I always bring filmmakers or journalists with me," O'Barry said. "It has become very dangerous."

In the film, he refers to one fellow activist who was found strangled on a beach while O'Barry was away. O'Barry says he believes his life is absolutely in danger in Japan because of his activism.

"I have a high media profile so if they arrest me they have to get it absolutely right because it's almost like arresting Flipper. And if they kill me, they have to get it just right. The power of television, film and music is the most effective arrow in our quiver."