Screened as part of NZIFF 2017

Blue 2017

Directed by Karina Holden Framing Reality

Filmed over two years in Indonesia, the Philippines, Hawaii and Australia, this beautifully crafted wake-up call to the state of the earth’s oceans profiles inspiring individuals working to preserve and protect marine life.

70 minutes DCP

Director/Screenplay

Producers

Sarah Beard
,
Karina Holden
,
Sue Clothier

Photography

Jody Muston

Underwater photography

Jon Shaw

Editor

Vanessa Milton

Music

Ash Gibson Greig

With

Lucas Handley
,
Madison Stewart
,
Mark Dia
,
Phillip Mango
,
Jennifer Lavers
,
Tim Silverwood
,
Valerie Taylor

Festivals

Sydney 2017

Elsewhere

With a background in natural history TV, director Karina Holden has made an empowering conservationist documentary showcasing the work and advocacy of six ‘ocean guardians’. Madison Stewart, who grew up from the age of two on a yacht on the Great Barrier Reef, has become an underwater filmmaker, using her camera and social media to increase public awareness of the plight of sharks. Mark Dia, regional oceans campaigner for Greenpeace South Asia, uncovers illegal fishing practices, corruption and labour abuses in the seafood industry.

Following the surf is what led Tim Silverwood to confront and combat the appalling ubiquity of plastic waste insea and on shoreline, Dr Jennifer Lavers is a marine eco-toxicologist, seen in the film patiently extracting some of that waste from the bellies of endangered sea birds. On Cape York Peninsula the Nanum Wunghtim rangers clear the coastal waters of the vast ghost nets abandoned by fishing boats and trapping sea life. Proving that conservation is not the sole preserve of the young, pioneering diver, shark advocate, artist and Australian heroine Valerie Taylor is cautiously upbeat at 82. The ocean will recover, she says, “if we leave it alone.”