An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker Rob Stewart - Part One - Page 2

Good question. It's because I was so excited. I've never made a movie before and I was so excited to have footage of a boat collision that as soon as I got to Costa Rica I FedExed it home. I wanted to get in on television and so on. So by pure coincidence by the time they came to arrest us, the footage was already gone.

That was a fantastic bit of luck.

Yeah, it was!

Another part of the film that was fascinating was your venture into the world of the Taiwanese mafia to film and expose illegal shark finning operations on private docks. How on earth did you get onto the private docks to get all that footage?

Well, we tried with three different crews and failed. I tried and I couldn't get in anywhere into any private docks. You know, I tried saying I wanted to buy fins and so on and nothing. That was the ultimate low point in making this film because we knew if we could get footage proving the government was in on this then we could get off. The second day we tried with a different crew and couldn't get in. And then we met this guy with a conservation group called "WildAid". He was Chinese-Singaporean. He got in and got all that footage.

By the end of the documentary, you show mass protests in the streets of Punta Reina as a result of the publicity from your arrests. Do you know what's happened in Costa Rica since the release of the film?

Since the film has been released, the government banned the private docks, but once public support waned, then the private docks came back. Then in January 2007, they signed a decree that banned them for good. But the Chinese have since taken over the private docks. The Taiwanese mafia has taken back the $92 million in donations, their biggest contributor, because they are dealing with the Chinese.

Are there plans to release the movie in China?

Yes, but we want to do more than just be released as some little eco-movie. So we're trying to get a major celebrity to be involved with the film. We're talking to Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, and Michelle Yeoh, so we're hoping to get one of them.

I wanted to ask you about some of the statistics you offer in the film. The most devastating being that shark populations have declined by 90% in the last 20 years.

Article Author: Nathalie Vanderheyden

Nathalie Vanderheyden is a fan of everything creative. She's an independent writer and blogger trying to find her voice in a loud world. She lives in "the Hammer" with her family and dog.

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