She is renowned amongst her peers for her gutsy, pioneering environmentalism over the last 50 years, but it is only now that Valerie Taylor's legacy is being celebrated on screen.
Famously providing 'real sharks' for Hollywood with husband Ron, the deep-sea diver's remarkable life is explored through breathtaking archive in the new Australian documentary Playing With Sharks, which played in competition at last week's Sundance Film Festival.
The festival itself — the first major film event in the calendar — had to follow other major events by presenting an online-only edition, due to the ongoing pandemic.
And while the film's star and her director Sally Aitken (David Stratton's Stories of Australian Cinema) may not have been able to visit the snowy peaks of Park City, Utah for the world premiere, enjoying it instead from their respective homes in Sydney, the buzz the film has been enjoying remains palpable.
Shark tamer
Playing with Sharks is awash with jaw-dropping surprises. Perhaps the biggest reveal of all: how tame most shark species can be.
At one point, Taylor can be seen training a shark to feed, much like a dog, at her beck and call. Never mind that she would later wear a chainmail suit to test the true power of a shark's bite — or face off with a pack of white-tipped sharks, her fists pumping, determined to swim alongside them in the ocean.
To call Valerie Taylor fearless would be an understatement.
Moments like these appear throughout Aitken's lively film — and it's thanks to Taylor, also a photographer, painter and author, and her late cinematographer husband Ron that these scenes were captured on film at all.
The couple — the 'Jacques Cousteaus' of the Asia-Pacific, if you will (albeit without the Frenchman's public purse) — shot thousands of hours of underwater footage.
You may have seen their images in the pages of National Geographic.
You've almost certainly seen their live shark footage in Spielberg's Jaws.
From hunter to protector
Living out a documentarian's dream, Aitken spent months trawling through visual and written material from Taylor's archive, while also interviewing friends and colleagues, as well as the lady herself.
"She's had a huge life, a varied life, an overwhelming number of experiences," Aitken says of her straight-talking subject, now aged 85, who's still out there diving in the Pacific.
"Sorting through all that is pretty challenging. And then, you add on the thousands of hours of footage — around 5000 overall — and the handwritten diaries from every year of her life since the 1960s. It was just huge.
Valerie Taylor and her husband Ron became world-famous conservationists almost by accident.
They first met while the pair were competing in spear-fishing contests around Sydney. With the oceans plentiful, spear-fishing was all the rage. But back then, in the late 50s, men outnumbered women 100-to-one in such competitions.
Taylor wasn't fazed by the lack of female representation (she won), nor by much else (she'd defied doctors by overcoming polio at age 12).
The Taylors were soon married and busy running a successful business selling deep-sea footage to TV networks at home and overseas.
LoadingTheir sudden jump from avid hunters to fierce ocean protectors followed the grisly culling of Great Whites, which Ron saw first hand (Valerie didn't: women were barred from going out on the boat).
Today, Aitken says, those early spear-fishing days still rankle.
"She really is in pain when she sees images of herself as a young woman spear-heading the nose of a grey nose shark," Aitken says of her subject, who was happy to open up about her life (Aitken's producer, Bettina Dalton, had worked with Taylor on a series back in 2000).
But Taylor still hoped the footage would be cut (it wasn't).
"Valerie has so much candour. Nothing is off limits. She has an incredibly honest relationship with her life," Aitken says.
"She has purpose. She knows it's bigger than her. Valerie's so keen to be there for the sharks, for the environment, even when she's in front of the lens, she's always carrying a particular message or point of view. It's never about her."
A hidden figure
This no-nonsense attitude partly explains why Valerie Taylor has, Aitken feels, been too-often overlooked.
Taylor was always portrayed by the male-dominated media of the 60s and 70s as the blonde bombshell — the 'Bond girl of the ocean' — in her bright red wetsuit and long blonde hair. But rarely, if ever, was she asked for comment.
Aitken admits that was typical of the time — she was a "hidden figure" of sorts, she says — yet it was Taylor who was often taking the big risks in the water.
Now, with her new film, which was snapped up by National Geographic for an undisclosed sum following its virtual premiere, Aitken feels the balance has at last been reset.
"Valerie has touched people in ways we may never know," she says of Taylor's legacy, which includes creating landmark shark protection schemes (and dedicated marine parks) for these much-misunderstood creatures that have survived for millions of years, only to now face a bleak future.
Aitken adds that Taylor touched people's lives "not just in carrying environmental messages but also personally: people have approached her and Ron privately and she always took the time to write them back".
"A shark scientist I met in South Australia — he's from Belgium — I mentioned I'd made this film and he said: 'I know Valerie!' He was 12 years old, doing a school project on sharks, and he wrote Valerie a fax, and now he's leading this ecological research group. There's Madison Stewart, a young Byron Bay shark advocate.
It seems fitting that, in one of the most poignant sequences in the film, Taylor is seen defiantly stepping into her pink wetsuit, the one that attracts the bull sharks — her intention — despite some clear and present aches and pains.
The dive is in Fiji, where she and her late husband last went out together (Ron passed in 2012), and the crew know her well.
"I'll be diving in a wheelchair," she says matter-of-factly as the boat heads out to sea. And there's no reason to think she won't.
Playing With Sharks is due in cinemas later this year.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMib2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTAyLTA3L3BsYXlpbmctd2l0aC1zaGFya3MtdmFsZXJpZS10YXlsb3ItYXVzdHJhbGlhbi1kb2N1bWVudGFyeS1kaXZlci8xMzExNjk4NNIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMzExNjk4NA?oc=5
2021-02-06 19:32:00Z
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