The Documentary
Documentary filmmakers Paul Cater Deaton and Monica Gephart are proud to announce the expansion of their highly-anticipated film, Lionfish, The Beautiful Outlaw. The festival cut premiered at the prestigious Our World - Underwater Film Festival, in Chicago, and has been accepted at the Blue Ocean Film Festival in Monterey, California. The half-hour version tested well with audiences in Boston, Chicago, and New York, and began airing on PBS in September 2011. Appropriately, the program was first aired on Virgin Islands PBS member station WTJX. A film with a 60 to 90-minute running time is now in production for national distribution, and the prospect of a series looms large.
The documentary studies the Indo-Pacific Lionfish as an invasive species in the Western Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Pterois volitans is a bold, voracious predator with a mane of venomous spines, capable of rendering a sting fatal to many marine species and excruciatingly painful to humans. This deadly beauty could upset the delicate ecological balance of reef systems already in peril.
Fear and misinformation abound as the marine community struggles to cope with the invasion. The typical result is a death sentence for the invaders. In Lionfish, The Beautiful Outlaw, Deaton and Gephart travel the world in search of answers. Film locations include native Lionfish habitats in the Philippines, Solomon Islands and the Red Sea, and their “adopted” waters in the Florida Keys, Bonaire, Belize, and the Virgin Islands. The documentary features interviews with famed oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle, Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry and others.
