PRE PRODUCTION SHORT TEASER
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LONGER Teaser
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TREATMENT
FORMAT/GENRE : An artful documentary feature film made together WITH wildlife
THEMES: Interspecies communication, connection, learning and our urgent climate crisis.
LOGLINE:
"A free diving dancer from Ireland, communicates with wild humpback whales, through movement and dance in the middle of the Pacific.
A film on interspecies love,
worth holding your breath for ... "
Short Synopsis
August 2017: Lifelong performer and oxytocin researcher Chloé Pisco met her first wild whale underwater. The two shared a dance duet which changed her life.
Pisco spent eight weeks underwater in Tonga / Hervey Bay Australia, eye-to-eye with these individuals and their unique personalities. She returns now alongside indigenous dancers whose own ancestors had defining relationships with these very whales. Footage of these dances show moments of deep connection, entangled in transformative lessons.
She speaks on land with Aboriginal Australian Elders, marine biologists and neuroendocrinologists about science, empathy and the language of love.
A story told in a non linear way, for whales.
Team so far:
- Director / writer / Producer: Chloé Pisco.
See here for FILM BIOG
- Co- Director / co-writer: Katie McNeice - (Lambing, Who we love)
See here for FILM BIOG
- Long list of possible 3rd Co-Directors being approached and in discussion, all First Nations Filmmakers.
- Underwater DoP: Julie Gautier - (Ama, One breath around the world)
- Documentary film mentor: Kim Bartley - (Pure Grit and Herstory Ireland’s Epic women)
- Editor and mentor: Kersti Grunditz-Brennan - (Blöd, Marie's Attitude)
- First AD / production co-ordinator: my sister Amelia de Buyl-Pisco - (Bring them down, Callan's Kicks, Float like a Butterfly)
Producers:
* Rosa Tran (USA) - Executive producer role (Anomalisa, I'm Thinking Of Ending Things, Final Space.)
* Amy Taylor (NZ) - Creative Producer role (Milked)
* Zlata Filipovic (IRE) - Line Producer role (the Farthest, When Women Won)
* Emma Owen (IRE) - BabyJane productions (Martini shot)
* Roisin Clarke (IRE/AUS/CAN) - Guiding Star (Weedonomics, EveryBody Matters, Thrive)
Statement from the director :
In 1970 the LP “Songs of the Humpback Whale” changed the course of our planet forever, igniting the entire conservation movement from “Save the whales” t-shirts, to COP 26, and Greta. Why? Because their songs evoked a clear emotional response in us: we felt how they felt and were mobilised to act!
I’ve had lucid dreams about flying with whales since I was a child and still do. After now spending years with whales above and below the water; I realise, as linear time is a human construct. It possibly doesn't even exist in the animal world. This made me feel so seen.
I think my ADHD brain might be part whale, or at least nonlinear––more like a mind map of interlinked ideas and feelings; I barely experience time in a line and now I know whales don’t. To me, my ADHD is a superpower making me see and feel time all at once, nonlinear, much like my storytelling.
I am a 42 year old queer, neurodivergent, circus / dance performer / director. For 22 years I worked in this field until I injured my spine and bruised my brain, losing mobility and balance, all during the pandemic. That combined with the non stop intense pain, all contributed to my first time having suicidal depression. It was phenomenal, overwhelming. I needed to heal myself and start living like I was part of the world again.
So I did, and it worked. I had been studying oxytocin for ten years by the time I met my first whale, but it was only when I had this encounter that my understanding finally fell into place.
Struck by the shared bonds between all living things, I saw the fight against time for humans to finally start living as whales do; with empathy, compassion and with love.
That's what fuelled me to invest in my own healing and what drives me now to make this film.
Questions at the heart of the FILM:
→ Do whales express themselves artistically?
→ Can we communicate interspecies through non verbal means?
→ Do whales love us back?
(Answer: Yes, yes and yes.)
→ Can we learn to experience existence like whales, by learning to communicate with them? A linguistic relativity interspecies perceptual exchange perhaps.
Think “Arrival” meets “My Octopus Teacher” via “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”, the latter because of the nonlinear nature of the moments whales exist in.
→ Who are we not to care about animals who genuinely love us?
Elements remaining unclear:
We don’t know what the whales will teach us, about ourselves, about existence or about the nature of connection, the universe or beyond.
→ How will the encounters impact the dancers? How will that change them and our audience?
→ Did the very ancestors of these individual whales connect with the very ancestors of our individual dancers?
→ Was the humpback whale population changed by the pandemic? Did the 3 years that Tonga remained shut to tourists, (shutting down the entire whale tour industry until now), affect the wellbeing of the whales?
LONGER SYNOPSIS:
We dive into a blue world, loud with emotive songs of longing, following a team that holds it’s breath in the South Pacific ocean, lead by Irish director and performer of dance / circus, CHLOÉ PISCO.
We bring 12 DANCERS and dancers to the Kingdom of Tonga, free diving, to meet wild humpback WHALES for the first time. Our team is made up exclusively of super talents who happen to belong to marginalised groups also. I.e.: Women, First Nations’s peoples, LGBTQIA+ people. First nations people's of Australia and of the South Pacific Islands have some of the oldest living cultures on earth, (some 100,000 years old so far), and many of which involve profound links to the sea and even whales.
They are all incredibly passionate about powerful communication through art and dance; working on affecting that very phenomenon for this film, but this time, interspecies! We will communicate non verbally/non acoustically through a dance and body language exchange…with wild humpback whales.
The director spent 8 weeks underwater doing this successfully in Tonga and Australia. Now it’s time to go back with our extraordinary team to explore our questions and get the shots we need to share our ideas with the world.
Pisco has been researching oxytocin since 2012 and in her recent MA thesis research, she proved that this empathy hormone is increased when we engage in live arts.
These whales build real bonds with us. They not only make oxytocin, the very same empathy and bonding hormone that 95 % of humans make, they rescue other species.
Most humpback whales also express themselves through dance and song.
Is that Art? Let’s start with what is art?
Our favourite definition: Art is an individual’s particular perspective expressed creatively. So whales are singing and dancing about their perspective on their own rich and complex worlds.
There is communicative language in that.
Pisco wants to decode it.
She wants to understand them.
Build a database of movement language.
After all, dance is an expressive format that delivers much larger and broader date packets than mere verbal sentences.
Communicating non verbally through dance interspecies is very significant.
Creating movement to communicate is art...
Art itself is creative expression.
Expression is a form of communication.
Communication involves connection.
Connection is at the heart of the internal oxytocin neurochemical tides of all mammals.
We are connecting to them and building bonds through this interchange of communicated ideas / feelings / data. AN din truth, dancers and artists know, art has the ability to transmit much larger and complex data packets than mere words in an email for example. That's why it's a whole other language.
A language we share with animals.
So when we dance these duets, we are not only sharing feelings through communication, not only are we building bonds, we are learning from them what it's like to be a whale.
How does it feel?
Eco tourism is often chasing mother and calf whale pairs, to exhaustion, and until they renounce their autonomy.
Capitalising on bullying these whales, and at the same time capitalising on the human desire for connection - oxytocin.
Pisco found a more authentic connection, that includes their consent, with and from these 25 metre beings with complex sentience, empathy, nuanced social bonds, altruism towards other species, (documented multiple times across the globe), huge hearts and giant brains that produce enormous amounts of oxytocin.
This happens in their habitat, all while avoiding scaring them, or crossing their “unspoken” boundaries.
During her 8 weeks underwater, the whales taught her how to understand them and their consensual boundaries. Tonga, specifically is a birthing ground where Pisco encountered dozens of mother calf pairs.
She will show how this happens when it handled well, and when it is not.
The Climax, as planned so far, is to have shots of whales and dancers in the same frame having a DANCED DUET conversations.
Playing a game of memory, where one does a move and the other responds with the same and then adds a move. Pisco did this in Tonga and it worked over and over again. Especially with the baby whale calves. We may even get to witness / document one of the many times that whales act altruistically, rescuing other species for example.
We know that once we are shooting, in situ with wild animals, other gifts and opportunities for themes will become apparent. Further Resolutions will become clear after the fact, during the edit.
Our goal as we lure people in with the dancing and singing whales… is to bond them to our subjects and then hit them with the hard truths.
I want everyone to feel what it's like to feel connection and care from a 25 metre oxytocin producing mammal!
You are transformed and are able to embody the truth:
We are not alone. Ever.
We are loved and a part of a inter-affective web of interspecies co-investment, dependence and care.
We are not just part of nature,
WE ARE NATURE
It is TIME TO FECKING ACT LIKE IT
→ Do whales express themselves artistically?
→ Can we communicate interspecies through non verbal means?
→ Do whales love us back?
(Answer: Yes, yes and yes.)
→ Can we learn to experience existence like whales, by learning to communicate with them? A linguistic relativity interspecies perceptual exchange perhaps.
Think “Arrival” meets “My Octopus Teacher” via “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”, the latter because of the nonlinear nature of the moments whales exist in.
→ Who are we not to care about animals who genuinely love us?
Elements remaining unclear:
We don’t know what the whales will teach us, about ourselves, about existence or about the nature of connection, the universe or beyond.
→ How will the encounters impact the dancers? How will that change them and our audience?
→ Did the very ancestors of these individual whales connect with the very ancestors of our individual dancers?
→ Was the humpback whale population changed by the pandemic? Did the 3 years that Tonga remained shut to tourists, (shutting down the entire whale tour industry until now), affect the wellbeing of the whales?
LONGER SYNOPSIS:
We dive into a blue world, loud with emotive songs of longing, following a team that holds it’s breath in the South Pacific ocean, lead by Irish director and performer of dance / circus, CHLOÉ PISCO.
We bring 12 DANCERS and dancers to the Kingdom of Tonga, free diving, to meet wild humpback WHALES for the first time. Our team is made up exclusively of super talents who happen to belong to marginalised groups also. I.e.: Women, First Nations’s peoples, LGBTQIA+ people. First nations people's of Australia and of the South Pacific Islands have some of the oldest living cultures on earth, (some 100,000 years old so far), and many of which involve profound links to the sea and even whales.
They are all incredibly passionate about powerful communication through art and dance; working on affecting that very phenomenon for this film, but this time, interspecies! We will communicate non verbally/non acoustically through a dance and body language exchange…with wild humpback whales.
The director spent 8 weeks underwater doing this successfully in Tonga and Australia. Now it’s time to go back with our extraordinary team to explore our questions and get the shots we need to share our ideas with the world.
Pisco has been researching oxytocin since 2012 and in her recent MA thesis research, she proved that this empathy hormone is increased when we engage in live arts.
These whales build real bonds with us. They not only make oxytocin, the very same empathy and bonding hormone that 95 % of humans make, they rescue other species.
Most humpback whales also express themselves through dance and song.
Is that Art? Let’s start with what is art?
Our favourite definition: Art is an individual’s particular perspective expressed creatively. So whales are singing and dancing about their perspective on their own rich and complex worlds.
There is communicative language in that.
Pisco wants to decode it.
She wants to understand them.
Build a database of movement language.
After all, dance is an expressive format that delivers much larger and broader date packets than mere verbal sentences.
Communicating non verbally through dance interspecies is very significant.
Creating movement to communicate is art...
Art itself is creative expression.
Expression is a form of communication.
Communication involves connection.
Connection is at the heart of the internal oxytocin neurochemical tides of all mammals.
We are connecting to them and building bonds through this interchange of communicated ideas / feelings / data. AN din truth, dancers and artists know, art has the ability to transmit much larger and complex data packets than mere words in an email for example. That's why it's a whole other language.
A language we share with animals.
So when we dance these duets, we are not only sharing feelings through communication, not only are we building bonds, we are learning from them what it's like to be a whale.
How does it feel?
Eco tourism is often chasing mother and calf whale pairs, to exhaustion, and until they renounce their autonomy.
Capitalising on bullying these whales, and at the same time capitalising on the human desire for connection - oxytocin.
Pisco found a more authentic connection, that includes their consent, with and from these 25 metre beings with complex sentience, empathy, nuanced social bonds, altruism towards other species, (documented multiple times across the globe), huge hearts and giant brains that produce enormous amounts of oxytocin.
This happens in their habitat, all while avoiding scaring them, or crossing their “unspoken” boundaries.
During her 8 weeks underwater, the whales taught her how to understand them and their consensual boundaries. Tonga, specifically is a birthing ground where Pisco encountered dozens of mother calf pairs.
She will show how this happens when it handled well, and when it is not.
The Climax, as planned so far, is to have shots of whales and dancers in the same frame having a DANCED DUET conversations.
Playing a game of memory, where one does a move and the other responds with the same and then adds a move. Pisco did this in Tonga and it worked over and over again. Especially with the baby whale calves. We may even get to witness / document one of the many times that whales act altruistically, rescuing other species for example.
We know that once we are shooting, in situ with wild animals, other gifts and opportunities for themes will become apparent. Further Resolutions will become clear after the fact, during the edit.
Our goal as we lure people in with the dancing and singing whales… is to bond them to our subjects and then hit them with the hard truths.
I want everyone to feel what it's like to feel connection and care from a 25 metre oxytocin producing mammal!
You are transformed and are able to embody the truth:
We are not alone. Ever.
We are loved and a part of a inter-affective web of interspecies co-investment, dependence and care.
We are not just part of nature,
WE ARE NATURE
It is TIME TO FECKING ACT LIKE IT
CHARACTERS
* The WHALES
* The dancers: dance and physical communication experts, musicians, poets and artists - mostly indigenous Australian and Pacific islanders.
* The knowledge experts, including Indigenous Elders and science consultants.
* Science itself as a character, represented by marine behavioural experts, neuroendocrinologists and even physicists, ( The latter to speak on time experiences as animals.). A nuance discourse as most academics will not admit their opinion on animal sentience, complexity or empathy in public. Most of them are still trapped by the hierarchic power structures that their stakeholder institutions are built on. And those are really stuck in the dark ages where human supremacists ideals over nature and animals are the norm.
DANCERS and FREE DIVERS:
→ Chloé Pisco, the instigator of all of this. She has lucid dreamt of whales and dolphins, even becoming one, since she was a child. She chased her dream of connection, communicating and expressing herself with whales, into reality.
→ Tyrel Dulvarie - Ex Bangarra Dancer and a proudly from Gimuy, he is a descendant of the Yirrganydji, Djirrabul, Kalkadoon and Umpila peoples.
→ Yolanda Lowatta - Ex Bangarra Dancer and a proud Giedi woman born on Thursday Island. She is a descendant of Yam Island in the Torres Strait and is also of Papua New Guinean and Fijian heritage.
→ Waangenga Blanco -
(The above three dancers are coincidentally also featured heavily in the Netflix distributed film Firestarter about Bangarra dance company.)
→ Jilli Balu Riley is a Djabugay and Muluridji man from the Kuranda area of Far North “so called” Queensland, Australia. He is an acrobat for C!RCA, a dancer and even a self taught free diver who spearfished since he was young.
→ Guy Ritani - Proud Takatapui Māori non binary, artist, dancer, activist, designer and permaqueer educator from Aotearoa ( New Zealand.)
→ Dominique “Domi” Abraham - A Papuan New Guinean Australian woman, International teacher of freediving for Molchanov, underwater mermaid performer and safety diver. Her passion for meditation, relaxation and vagus nerve releases / somatic experiencing all inform her teaching practice in free diving.
She will be our underwater mama. Her partner Harry, also a safety free diver and excellent teacher, (along with their two year old will be onboard).
→ Freedive champion Amber Bourke - Incredible multiple record holding free diving World champion from Brisbane, and safety free diver.
→ Some of our Indigenous advisers onboard with us
(All artists participating will have editorial power over their image and sound.)
* The WHALES
* The dancers: dance and physical communication experts, musicians, poets and artists - mostly indigenous Australian and Pacific islanders.
* The knowledge experts, including Indigenous Elders and science consultants.
* Science itself as a character, represented by marine behavioural experts, neuroendocrinologists and even physicists, ( The latter to speak on time experiences as animals.). A nuance discourse as most academics will not admit their opinion on animal sentience, complexity or empathy in public. Most of them are still trapped by the hierarchic power structures that their stakeholder institutions are built on. And those are really stuck in the dark ages where human supremacists ideals over nature and animals are the norm.
DANCERS and FREE DIVERS:
→ Chloé Pisco, the instigator of all of this. She has lucid dreamt of whales and dolphins, even becoming one, since she was a child. She chased her dream of connection, communicating and expressing herself with whales, into reality.
→ Tyrel Dulvarie - Ex Bangarra Dancer and a proudly from Gimuy, he is a descendant of the Yirrganydji, Djirrabul, Kalkadoon and Umpila peoples.
→ Yolanda Lowatta - Ex Bangarra Dancer and a proud Giedi woman born on Thursday Island. She is a descendant of Yam Island in the Torres Strait and is also of Papua New Guinean and Fijian heritage.
→ Waangenga Blanco -
(The above three dancers are coincidentally also featured heavily in the Netflix distributed film Firestarter about Bangarra dance company.)
→ Jilli Balu Riley is a Djabugay and Muluridji man from the Kuranda area of Far North “so called” Queensland, Australia. He is an acrobat for C!RCA, a dancer and even a self taught free diver who spearfished since he was young.
→ Guy Ritani - Proud Takatapui Māori non binary, artist, dancer, activist, designer and permaqueer educator from Aotearoa ( New Zealand.)
→ Dominique “Domi” Abraham - A Papuan New Guinean Australian woman, International teacher of freediving for Molchanov, underwater mermaid performer and safety diver. Her passion for meditation, relaxation and vagus nerve releases / somatic experiencing all inform her teaching practice in free diving.
She will be our underwater mama. Her partner Harry, also a safety free diver and excellent teacher, (along with their two year old will be onboard).
→ Freedive champion Amber Bourke - Incredible multiple record holding free diving World champion from Brisbane, and safety free diver.
→ Some of our Indigenous advisers onboard with us
(All artists participating will have editorial power over their image and sound.)
- Dalisa Pigram - a proud Yawuru/Bardi woman and Artistic co - director of MARRUGEKU company - Sydney/ Broome
- Rachael Maza - A proud Yidinji from North Queensland, Meriam from the Torres Strait Island of Mer, and Dutch on her mother’s side. Rachael is Artistic Director of ILBIJERRI Theatre Company.
Expert Discussions:- Alexis Pauline Gumbs - Confirmed : Author of Undrowned: BLACK FEMINIST LESSONS from MARINE MAMMALS.
- Dr Nan Hauser - Confirmed: President & Director of the Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation Marine biologist in the Cook islands, whose life was saved by a humpback whale.
- Tyson Yunkapota - Approached: Author of SAND TALK: How indigenous thinking can save the world.
- Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi - Confirmed: a Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyteller whose writing work focuses on poetry and climate change.
- Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare - Approached: Authors of Survival of the Friendliest.
- Paul Watson - Confirmed: Co - Founder of Greenpeace and founder of Sea Shepherd who's entire life was changed by the altruism of a whale.
- Katie Payne - Approached: First to recognise the whale sounds were actual song/ music and co producer of Songs of the Humpback Whale 1970.
- Philip Wollen: Confirmed: Animal advocate and philanthropist, co founder of Sea shepherd Australia.
- Tentative and delicate research is ongoing to establish exactly what sharing of which knowledge, from a long list of indigenous elders recognised as having specific connections with whales, is appropriate and safe for them to share, (from Australia, Tonga, Aotearoa - New Zealand and North America.)
Below is a sample of the RAW UNEDITED FOOTAGE from my research in TONGA and Australia.

We wish to acknowledge the Butchulla people, the Yugambeh people, the clans that make up the Bundjalung Nations, the Turrbal and Yaggera people, as original custodians of the lands and seas where we often work.
Places where stories, culture and art have been made and shared for millennia. Recognising their ancestors, as well as past, current and future elders; whose sovereign country was never ceded.
Australia always was, and always will be, aboriginal land.