I Am an Animal

I Am an Animal
2007, 72 minutes
Directed by Matthew Galkin

About the Film

I Am an Animal offers a candid and introspective look at Ingrid Newkirk, President and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). For the past twenty-seven years, she and the organization she helped found have tirelessly attacked one of the pillars of civilization: mankind’s dominance over and exploitation of animals. Taking full advantage of the unprecedented access he gained to Newkirk and the inner workings of her organization, director Matthew Galkin explores PETA’s ideology and often militant tactics, which he deftly counterbalances with the voices of some of PETA’s most vociferous critics. However, Galkin focuses primarily on Newkirks’s personality, beliefs, and motivations. This film provides an intimate, provocative portrait of a very private person committed to a very public crusade.

PETA has sparked controversies around the world, engineering radical campaigns for animal rights that have included undercover investigations, anti-fur protests, and naked demonstrations. I Am an Animal includes graphic footage of some forms of the cruelty to animals that have fueled many of Newkirk’s campaigns against research facilities, meat-processing factories, and clothing stores around the world. Without question, the direction and strategies of PETA are a direct reflection of its single-minded leader, who is both revered and despised for her uncompromising belief in the rights of animals, and her willingness to cross taboos and offend numerous groups to make her point.

Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, PETA has three hundred employees and an annual operating budget of $25 million, most of which comes from private donations. With over one million members, PETA has been described as “by far the most successful radical organization in America.” The group seeks “total animal liberation,” says Newkirk—with the goals of eliminating meat or dairy consumption, aquariums, circuses, hunting, fishing, fur and leather use, and medical research using animals—even if human lives could be saved by that research. PETA is even opposed to the use of seeing-eye dogs.

Under Newkirk’s watch, PETA implemented the high-risk, high-publicity policies used by the organization in animal-abuse investigations and protests against offending groups—earning Newkirk the contempt of nearly as many people as those who support her.

Newkirk works tirelessly, often putting in eighteen-hour days, and performing many of PETA’s hands-on operations herself. I Am an Animal follows Newkirk as she conducts several rescue missions, including saving a malnourished dog living outside a trailer home and recovering a turkey that has escaped a processing plant. [insert P_E_O_IAmAnAnimal_film_5.AngyDog.jpg here] The documentary also chronicles the staging of a protest against “fur abuser” Jean Paul Gaultier, as Newkirk and her PETA colleagues take over his Paris boutique, smearing fake blood on themselves and the store windows.

PETA’s uncompromising platform has won ardent celebrity supporters as well as equally ardent critics. Says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, an advocacy group unaffiliated with PETA, “They [PETA] have trivialized animal rights. They have exploited racism and women in campaigns, using people as props to project animal rights, and you can’t do that. You can’t sensationalize an issue involving a lot of pain, a racist issue for example, and expect to advance an ethical cause in doing so. The means don’t justify the ends.”

To Newkirk, saving the lives of innocent animals justifies the criticism PETA receives for its questionable marketing; in one memorable campaign, pent-up pigs and chickens were compared to Jews in the Holocaust. Argues Newkirk, “Sometimes the only way you get discussion on a table is to do something jarring … I still hold that the [Holocaust] campaign is absolutely true.”

About the Director

I Am an Animal is Matthew Galkin’s first film as solo director; he was also co-producer. His previous credits include the HBO documentary series Family Bonds and loudQUIETloud, a feature documentary chronicling The Pixies’ 2004 reunion tour, which he co-produced and co-directed with Steven Cantor.

Premiered on HBO November 19, 2007. View information on other showings and full schedule here.

All video and photos courtesy of HBO Documentary Films and PETA.