wcfullerton

Great White Shark Legend (2014)

Real sharks, real people,real good.

So everybody knows all about Great White sharks, don't they? You always watch Shark Week, and you love the way the shark attacks the shark cage for no reason, because they really are mindless killing machines that want to eat you. It's the stuff of nightmares, and we do love our monsters, right?

So how come in husband and wife team Ricardo and Rachel Lacombe's documentary feature none of the above happens? How come the people who appear in this film speak so fondly of these "monsters of the deep" and show genuine concern for their well being? The easy answer is that this is the reality. This isn't the deliberate over dramatised, sensational, demonisation of a species so exploited by TV networks the world over. What you get here instead is a message. People and shark living side by side without fear, prejudice or malice, that breathes fresh air into a genre that has sadly drifted away from educational content in favour of so called entertainment and thrills.

Great White Shark Legend is a story about sharks, people and an amazing place where they enjoy a coexistence that is seldom seen. We journey to Simon's Town on the cape peninsula of South Africa where we find African Shark Eco Charters, the cage diving company set up by Rob Lawrence who began viewing these amazing animals himself over 20 years ago all from the safety of a small inflatable craft. Rob recalls these early encounters with vivid detail as we get to know the man behind the legendary tales. The relaxed style of the interviews makes this an intimate personal film, without bias or angle other than the truth about sharks. The cinematography is quite stunning. False Bay has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, with some of the most amazing sunrises, all captured here in vibrant colour, made even more amazing by the breaching sharks that are framed by such incredible natural beauty time and again. If you are unfamiliar with the term "breaching shark", it means leaping free from the water in a natural hunting technique that has been honed for millions of years. The prey of the sharks are the several thousand Cape Fur Seals that call Seal Island home. During the winter months the young seals take to the water for the first time and come face to face with the seasonal visiting sharks, and the battle of wits begins again, honing and fine tuning the evolution of both species, prey and hunter in one of natures most spectacular natural interactions.

As well as the amazing footage of sharks, we learn about shark awareness and water safety from the Shark Spotters programme, set up to educate and promote being "shark smart", understanding that the ocean and its inhabitants must be respected if we are to share that environment, and that it's crucial to the future of sharks and the way we look at using the sea. Education and awareness is also evident in the interviews with local children of the post JAWS generation, who display a grasp of knowledge and conservation well beyond their years. Many adults would do well to pay attention to the attitudes of these young shark ambassadors. It's very encouraging to see such maturity and reason on display and should give hope to conservationists that the future of our sharks and oceans will be in safe hands, providing WE pay attention and listen to them now.

Hopefully this movie will kickstart a change of how sharks are portrayed on film, and show that you can entertain people and educate them at the same time. To be honest it's long overdue, and thank goodness someone has made a very credible attempt to be different and go against the flow of tired predictable documentaries churned out on autopilot in recent years.

Well done Ricardo and Rachel, you have delivered, and delivered well. I hope that this film will be seen as the benchmark for future productions to be measured by. This is the film that needs to be seen by all, not just shark huggers like me. We all deserve this film, and perhaps more to the point, the sharks do too.