''Behind the Mask: The Story of the People Who Risk Everything to Save Animals'' is a 2006
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
about the
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, leaderless, decentralized political and social resistance movement that engages in and promotes non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelty. It originated in th ...
(ALF). It took three years of filming, interviewing, and editing to complete. The movie was created by
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...
lawyer
Shannon Keith
Shannon Keith is an American animal rights lawyer, activist, and documentary director/producer. She is the director of the Animal Liberation Front documentary, '' Behind the Mask: The Story Of The People Who Risk Everything To Save Animals''.
Back ...
, who owns Uncaged Films and ARME (Animal Rescue, Media & Education).
About
The film is about animal rights activists who break into laboratories and other facilities to obtain footage of the way animals are used. It includes well-known names within the
animal rights movement, some of whom have been imprisoned for taking
direct action
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
. According to the film's producer Shannon Keith, a lawyer, "change only happens in society when laws are broken", and according to arsonist Melanie Arnold who set ablaze a slaughterhouse, "If I had an opportunity, I would do it again since economic damage to animal abusers is justifiable."
See also
*
Animal liberation movement
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, ...
References
External links
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{{Portal bar, Animals, Film, United States, Society
2006 documentary films
American independent films
Animal Liberation Front
Anti-modernist films
Documentary films about animal rights
Documentary films about animal testing
Documentary films about politics
Documentary films about terrorism
Films about activists
2000s English-language films
2000s American films