The Woman Who Loves Giraffes Watch Party

THIS FILM IS GEO-RESTRICTED TO ALBERTA.

THIS FILM WILL BE CLOSED CAPTIONED.

 

Join THIRD ACTIon Film Festival at an online screening of the documentary “The Woman Who Loves Giraffes” followed by a Q&A with director, Alison Reid and Dr. Anne Innis Dagg.

In 1956, four years before Jane Goodall ventured into the world of chimpanzees and seven years before Dian Fossey left to work with mountain gorillas – in fact, before anyone, man or woman had made such a trip – 23-year-old Canadian biologist, Anne Innis Dagg, made an unprecedented solo journey to South Africa to become the first person in the world to study animal behaviour in the wild on that continent. When she returned home a year later armed with ground-breaking research, the insurmountable barriers she faced as a female scientist proved much harder to overcome.

In 1972, having published 20 research papers as an assistant professor of zoology at University of Guelph, the Dean of the university, denied her tenure. She couldn’t apply to the University of Waterloo because the Dean there told Anne that he would never give tenure to a married woman. This was the catalyst that transformed Anne into a feminist activist.

For three decades, Anne Innis Dagg was absent from the giraffe world until 2010 when she was sought out by giraffologists and not just brought back to into the fold, but finally celebrated for her work.

In The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, an older (85), wiser Anne takes us on her first expedition back to Africa to retrace where her trail-blazing journey began more than half a century ago.

By retracing her original steps, and with letters and stunning, original 16mm film footage, Anne offers an intimate window into her life as a young woman, juxtaposed with a first hand look at the devastating reality that giraffes are facing today.

Both the world’s first ‘giraffologist’, whose research findings ultimately became the foundation for many scientists following in her footsteps, and the species she loves have each experienced triumphs as well as nasty battle scars.

Trailer 

 

Guest: Director/Producer/Writer, Alison Reid

Alison Reid is an award-winning director who began her career as a stunt coordinator and second unit director. She formed Free Spirit Films to produce projects diverse in genre but similar in their exploration of the human spirit. Reid’s television directing credits include four episodes of HUDSON & REX as well as SAVING HOPE, HEARTLAND, and MURDOCH MYSTERIES. Her Second unit directing credits include THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (Netflix). Reid’s first feature length comedy, THE BABY FORMULA, had a worldwide film festival run, sold internationally, won the Audience Award at the 2009 Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, Best LGBT Film at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Zenith Award at the 2009 Montreal World Film Festival. Reid is a director alumnus of Creative Women’s Workshops’ Women in the Director’s Chair Program and a producer alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre. She received the 2007 Crystal Award for Emerging Director from DGC/WIFT.

Guest: Dr. Anne Innis Dagg

Anne Innis Dagg is our heroine: pioneer, groundbreaking scientist, underdog, animal rights activist, feminist, teacher and mother. The youngest child of academics Harold Innis and Mary Quayle Innis, Anne has received worldwide recognition for her work with giraffes, becoming not only the first person to study giraffe behaviour in the wild, but also the first person to study any wild animal behaviour in Africa. She is the author of over 60 scientific papers and 24 books including, Pursuing Giraffe: A 1950’s Adventure (2006); 5 Giraffes (2016); and Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist (2016). Anne’s academic interests include giraffes and Africa; gaits of mammals; sexual bias in behavioural biology; feminism (especially in academia); a historical study on Canadian women non-fiction authors; sociobiology; animal behaviours; aggression; and human evolution. Her honours include being named one of the top eight women biologists in Canada (1975); receiving a pioneering award from the Association of Giraffe Care Professionals (2010); and a lifetime achievement award from the International Giraffid Conference (2016). More recently, Anne was featured in “Courage and Passion: Canadian Women in Natural Sciences”, an exhibition which celebrates Canadian women who broke barriers to pursue their passion for science at the Canadian Museum of Nature. 

 

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