Pat Tucker takes Koani and Indy for a walk in TRUE WOLF
TRUE WOLF: THE STORY OF KOANI AND HER UNUSUAL PACK (Rob Whitehair, 2012)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, August 17
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.truewolfmovie.com
In 1991, Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker were asked to help raise a gray wolf named Koani for a documentary about what they consider to be a largely misunderstood species. Weide and Tucker, who had started the organization Wild Sentry to educate people, especially children, about the real nature of wolves and battle negative stereotyping, ended up keeping Koani, treating it like it was a combination of a child and a pet. Over the years, they took Koani, who came to be known as the ambassador wolf, to schools across the country, all the while wondering whether they had done the right thing by domesticating her. Director and producer Rob Whitehair (The Little Red Truck) depicts the unusual relationship between Bruce, Pat, Koani, and their mixed-breed dog, Indy, in the intriguing documentary True Wolf. Reminiscent of Lisa Leeman’s One Lucky Elephant, about a man’s longtime friendship with a rather large circus animal, True Wolf brings up numerous questions regarding domestication and captivity, showing protesters who would rather see wolves killed than have them roam wild in parts of Montana while Bruce and Pat speak lovingly of Koani. They marvel at how much she enjoys going for long walks, yet seeing this remarkable animal on a leash just doesn’t seem right. “Could we live with this beast?” Bruce remembers thinking. “What do you do when you’ve fallen in love?” Pat adds. It’s a fascinating conundrum that doesn’t necessarily have any easy answers, particularly at a time when the wolf population is experiencing a serious decline. True Wolf opens August 17 at Cinema Village; the 7:35 screening on Friday night will be followed by a Q&A with Whitehair and members of the National Wolfwatcher Coalition, who will be joined by current ambassador wolf Atka.
“If we don’t open our eyes, if we are afraid of challenges, then we won’t be cultivating life,” Flor Ilva Triochez says near the start of the compelling documentary We Women Warriors, continuing, “We will be cultivating death.” From 2002 to 2009, journalist Nicole Karsin covered the ongoing bloody battle in Colombia between the army, the paramilitary, and rebel guerrillas, a violent struggle whose collateral damage includes atrocities being suffered by the more than one hundred indigenous tribes caught in the middle, their very existence being threatened by the unending drug-related violence. Karsin picked up a camera to tell the story through the eyes of three three brave women who, independent of one another, decided to do what the government and others refused to and take matters into their own hands. Karsin follows Doris Puchana, an Awá governor who risks her life by speaking out publicly about a horrific massacre; Ludis Rodriguez, a Kankuamao mother who watched her husband get murdered and was then falsely accused of having killed fifteen policemen; and Flor Ilva, who, as the first female leader of the Nasa people in three hundred years, demands that the police take down their barracks and leave her community. Eventually the three amazing women come together to share details not only of their lives but of their organizational methods, unwilling to be silenced as they seek peace for their people. Part of the sixteenth annual DocuWeeks festival at the IFC Center, We Women Warriors is an inspiring tale filled with hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, as three strong women overcome personal tragedy to fight for justice and freedom. We Women Warriors runs August 10-16, with the filmmakers on hand for one of the two daily screenings. The festival continues through August 23 with such other documentaries as Eugene Martin’s The Anderson Monarchs, about an African-American girls soccer team in an at-risk Philadelphia neighborhood, Dafna Yachin’s Digital Dharma: One Man’s Mission to Save a Culture, about Mormon E. Gene Smith’s determination to preserve ancient Sanskrit and Tibetan writings, and Thomas Riedelsheimer’s Garden in the Sea, in which Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias builds an underwater sculpture in the Mexican Sea of Cortez.
