Unlocking the Cage | |
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Directed by | Chris Hegedus D.A. Pennebaker |
Starring | Steven Wise |
Music by | James Lavino |
Production companies | Pennebaker Hegedus Films HBO Documentary Films |
Distributed by | First Run Features |
Release date |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Unlocking the Cage is a 2016 American documentary film about the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) and lawyer Steven Wise's efforts to grant limited legal personhood rights to chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and elephants. It was directed by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. It was the final film directed by Pennebaker before his death in August 2019.
A. O. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, writing that "D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus bring their relaxed, acute observational style of filmmaking to bear on a thorny tangle of legal and philosophical questions. Part courtroom drama, part rumination on what separates human beings from other animals, the film is above all a sympathetic portrait of an advocate...it is hard to watch Unlocking the Cage without being somewhat swayed by the arguments — or at least impressed by the sincerity — of Steven Wise." [1]
The Guardian called it an "exemplary animal rights documentary", and that it "presents some fascinating legal and ethical issues". [2] However, Variety's critic, Peter Debruge, accused Wise of "trying to trick a series of New York state judges into granting chimpanzees the same rights as humans" and called his efforts a "publicity stunt." [3]
Dont [sic] Look Back is a 1967 American documentary film directed by D. A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in England.
Great ape personhood is a movement to extend personhood and some legal protections to the non-human members of the great ape family: bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts.
The War Room is a 1993 American documentary film about Bill Clinton's campaign for President of the United States during the 1992 United States presidential election. Directed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, the film was released on December 5, 1993. It was eventually nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.
The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1993, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and others who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.
Donn Alan Pennebaker was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. Pennebaker was called by The Independent as "arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture".
Startup.com is a 2001 American documentary film directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus. D. A. Pennebaker served as a producer on the film. It follows the dot-com start-up govWorks.com, which raised $60 million in funding from Hearst Interactive Media, KKR, the New York Investment Fund, and Sapient.
Steven M. Wise was an American lawyer and legal scholar who specialized in animal rights, primatology, and animal intelligence. He taught animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, John Marshall Law School, Lewis & Clark Law School, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and at the Master’s in Animal Law and Society of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He was a former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project. The Yale Law Journal had called him "one of the pistons of the animal rights movement."
Lucy (1964–1987) was a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma, and raised by Maurice K. Temerlin, a psychotherapist and professor at the University of Oklahoma and his wife, Jane.
Buddy is a 1997 American biographical comedy-drama family film written and directed by Caroline Thompson, produced by Jim Henson Pictures and American Zoetrope, and released by Columbia Pictures on June 6, 1997. It starred Rene Russo as Mrs. Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz and Robbie Coltrane as her husband.
First Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City.
Paola Cavalieri is an Italian philosopher, most known for her work arguing for extension of human rights to the other great apes and more broadly, "to mammals and birds, and probably vertebrates in general". In addition to her books, she was the editor of Etica & Animali, a quarterly international philosophy journal that published nine volumes from 1988 to 1998.
The Center for Great Apes is an animal sanctuary for great apes located east of Wauchula, Florida. Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1993, the sanctuary has about 70 orangutans and chimpanzees who were formally used in entertainment, scientific research, or the exotic pet trade. The sanctuary sits on 100 acres of land in rural Florida, southwest of Orlando.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a 2011 American science fiction action film directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by the writing team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is a reboot of the Planet of the Apes film series and is the seventh installment overall and the first in the reboot series. The film stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and Andy Serkis. In the film, Caesar (Serkis), a chimpanzee genetically enhanced and raised by chemist Will Rodman (Franco), goes from living in captivity to eventually leading an ape uprising against humanity.
Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability.
Chris Hegedus is an American documentary filmmaker. She and her husband, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, founded the company Pennebaker Hegedus Films.
The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) is an American nonprofit animal rights organization seeking to change the legal status of at least some nonhuman animals from that of property to that of persons, with a goal of securing rights to bodily liberty and bodily integrity. The organization works largely through state-by-state litigation in what it determines to be the most appropriate common law jurisdictions and bases its arguments on existing scientific evidence concerning self-awareness and autonomy in nonhuman animals. Its sustained strategic litigation campaign has been developed primarily by a team of attorneys, legal experts, and volunteer law students who have conducted extensive research into relevant legal precedents. The NhRP filed its first lawsuits in December 2013 on behalf of four chimpanzees held in captivity in New York State. In late 2014, NhRP President Steven Wise and Executive Director Natalie Prosin announced in the Global Journal of Animal Law that the Nonhuman Rights Project was expanding its work into other countries, beginning in Switzerland, Argentina, England, Spain, Portugal, and Australia.
The Ghosts in Our Machine is a 2013 Canadian documentary film by Liz Marshall. The film follows the photojournalist and animal rights activist Jo-Anne McArthur as she photographs animals on fur farms and at Farm Sanctuary, among other places, and seeks to publish her work. The film as a whole is a plea for animal rights.
Town Bloody Hall is a 1979 documentary film of a panel debate between feminist advocates and activist Norman Mailer. Filmed on April 30, 1971, in The Town Hall in New York City. Town Bloody Hall features a panel of feminist advocates for the women's liberation movement and Norman Mailer, author of The Prisoner of Sex (1971). Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker produced the film, which stars Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, and Norman Mailer. The footage of the panel was recorded and released as a documentary in 1979. Produced by Shirley Broughton, the event was originally filmed by Pennebaker. The footage was then filed and rendered unusable. Hegedus met Pennebaker a few years later, and the two edited the final version of the film for its release in 1979. Pennebaker described his filming style as one that exists without labels, in order to let the viewer come to a conclusion about the material, which inspired the nature of the Town Bloody Hall documentary. The recording of the debate was intended to ensure the unbiased documentation, allowing it to become a concrete moment in feminist history.
International Primate Day, September 1, is an annual educational observance event organized since 2005 largely by British-based Animal Defenders International (ADI) and supported annually by various primate-oriented advocacy organizations, speaks for all higher and lower primates, typically endorsing humane agendas where primates are at risk, as in research institutions or species endangerment in precarious environmental situations.