When people hear the word “documentary” they instantly get this feeling of a monotone narrator boring them to bits. Well, I have to say that I absolutely love documentaries and in the last five years they have changed very much. The directors and/or producers have learned to challenge and dramatically grab the audience's attention to get the much-needed message out and absorb it into their minds. Remember when you watched a great action movie and/or a dance movie and it gave you the inspiration to want to exercise/dance/train in some way. The documentaries for animals today do just that and the message is received a lot easier now. There are many documentaries out there that make you want to do your best to change something. It can be an internal change or an external one, however the need is very strong and it vibrates through you to be the voice for the voiceless. Myself, I went right to the canvas and started to paint the stories to expose the images to the public. This passion led me to do an extensive amount of research and I found a ton of creative documentaries that depict certain multi-billion dollar corporations exploiting animals in an inhumane and horrible way. I have met with many movie producers that are all following their creative passion to expose these truths such as Rob Stewart for his award winning documentary “Sharkwater” and Shannon Keith for another award winner “Behind the Mask” and her more recent movie “Skintrade”. These two movies “Sharkwater” & “Skintrade” may seem very different to the naked eye, however with my environmental background and all the research and understanding of how these corporations operate/process I found an important connection. The connection is that corporatoins are all explosively destructive to the environment/ecosystems and outrageously cruel to the animals they profit from. The ecosystems that are being impacted are in the hundreds of thousands internationally and they all make up the function of how this planet works and operates naturally. When you combine all of these commercial practices that these documentaries relay to you – regarding animals – you'll find a much larger picture of the impacts that are occurring internationally. So I say please do your own research and become educated on what is happening on this planet. You could start with the above documentaries and/or some of these ones: End of the Line, The Cove, Sea of Change, Acid Test, and Earthlings. ** Bob Timmons is a Canad-based animal activist and proponent of animal rights throughout the world. BM
