Breaking Through The Clouds

Since the day that the historic Miracle March for Lolita took place on January 17th, 2015, I have been working on a film that captures the inspiration of Tokitae's story. After she was captured 44 years ago, concrete walls trapped her inside an illegally sized tank in which she is longer than it is deep. She was given the stage name Lolita. Theme park music blasted as she leaped in the sky only to be clutched by gravity, whose merciless hands threw her back into the tank. Water exploded into the air. People cheered, unaware of her brutal capture just days before. And there Lolita has remained the past 44 years.

When I filmed her in the Miami Seaquarium the day after the march, I noticed some interesting patterns in Lolita's behavior. She would come up to people after shows and try to interact with them, as if she was trying to get them to understand. After a few minutes, she turned her back on them and swam away. I captured this behavior in my film, where Lolita despairs in the fact that nobody seems to care.

The most heartbreaking scenes that I filmed were the last ones I recorded when the stadium was empty. Only when people see what goes on after the show can they understand how much suffering captive cetaceans endure. Lolita has circled alone around the same concrete walls for 44 years. She can never see the sun rise or set and never feel or taste the ocean. She is deprived the very things that define us – freedom, family, and love. All she sees are blank stares from people who are fighting to get the perfect spot for taking a photo.

The film is inspired from Tokitae's name itself, which means 'nice day, pretty colors' in Coast Salish. If people can look at her suffering and understand what she endured, they will in turn be able to understand why it is so wrong to keep these sentient creatures in captivity, why it is so important to respect nature, and how we can find light when it seems all hope is lost.

It is also inspired by my own struggle to overcome depression. One day I considered suicide but I thought of Tokitae and how she overcame everything. As I was walking home from school, a few rays of the sun broke through the clouds and I felt all of my sadness wash away.

Although the film is about Tokitae and her story, it captures what many of us endure. We all get depressed, we all fall down. But it's how we respond that matters. Even when the sky is black and there is no hope, love is far more powerful and, as Tokitae's mother says in the film, cannot be destroyed.