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On this day in vegan history · January 24, 2009

The Cove Wins the Sundance Audience Award

A former National Geographic photographer used hidden cameras disguised as rocks to film a secret dolphin slaughter, and Park City handed him its top prize.

The Cove Wins the Sundance Audience Award
Wikimedia Commons / Louie Psihoyos

The facts

Date
January 24, 2009
Award
Audience Award presented by Honda: U.S. Documentary, 25th Sundance Film Festival
Location
Park City, Utah
Later honor
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, 82nd Academy Awards (2010)

On January 24, 2009, Louie Psihoyos's documentary The Cove took the Audience Award presented by Honda: U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival's closing ceremony in Park City, Utah. The film follows Psihoyos, a former National Geographic photographer, and dolphin trainer turned activist Ric O'Barry as they rig hidden cameras and microphones to document the yearly dolphin drive hunt in Taiji, Japan. Sundance audiences picked it out of 879 films submitted in the documentary category that year. The award was just the opening act: the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature the following year, pulling the Taiji hunts out of obscurity and into a worldwide argument about what people owe animals they never see.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. The Audience Award presented by Honda: U.S. Documentary was presented to The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos.

    Sundance Institute, announcing the 2009 festival awards

    Source: Sundance.org

  2. It also won the U.S. Audience Award at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in January 2009, selected out of 879 submissions in the category.

    Wikipedia, "The Cove (film)"

    Source: Wikipedia

Why it still matters

The Cove turned a small Japanese fishing town into an annual flashpoint for animal advocates and gave the fight against dolphin hunts and captivity its most-watched piece of evidence.

Sources

This history is still being written.

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