Elephant image. Courtesy of IFAW

Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow  (remember Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty ?) is tackling a different kind of war – the annihilation of African elephants by organized bands of poachers whose ivory trafficking is linked to funding terrorists– in a 3-minute film Last Days accepted for the New York Film Festival and scheduled to air September 27 in New York City at Lincoln Center.  Bigelow runs the action backwards from the ivory trinkets for sale in China to the bloodbath that brings down these magnificent mammals. In an Indiewire story,  New York Film Festival Director  Kent Jones, says of the film, “I was floored. In three minutes, the viewer feels the horrors of elephant poaching on a global scale and gains a clear, even vivid understanding of the economic, moral and political issues involved. A powerfully concise piece of work, and we’re proud to be hosting its world premiere and providing a forum in which this urgent issue can be illuminated.”

Following the premiere, a panel moderated by Bigelow, The Crisis in Elephant Poaching,  will feature WildAid’s Peter Knights, Assistant District Attorney of New York County Julieta V. Lozano, journalist Peter Godwin, and Somali human rights activist K’naan Warsame.

⇒Check out the recent coverage in Green News Update on a new research study that finds 100,000 African elephants have been slaughtered in 2010-2012. (Our thanks to the World Wildlife Fund for use of their campaign photo on our home page.)

Forest elephants in the Congo. Courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society