Film shines a light on towering Canadian researcher
The Woman Who Loves Giraffes highlights Dagg’s disappointments, activism, renaissance
Have you heard of Dr. Anne Innis Dagg?
No? Well sadly that isn’t surprising as the Canadian’s impressive scientific career was literally shelved by sexism.
Back in 1956 at age 23 Dagg packed up some notebooks, binoculars and cameras and headed to South Africa to fulfil a childhood dream of getting to know more about giraffes.
That trip made Dagg, now almost 86, the first person ever to study African mammals in the wild. Her work in Africa took place several years before the well known Jane Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park to study chimpanzees and Dian Fossey headed into the Rwandan mountains for her gorilla studies.
Waterloo’s Dagg returned to Canada in 1957 and began a PhD in animal behaviour at the University of Waterloo. Her extensive research, including many published papers in highly regarded journals, should have lead to Dagg’s academic advancement instead she was marginalized by sexist university policies and denied jobs and tenure in turn leading her to a life of feminist activism.
Flash forward decades and giraffe experts — who by the way consider the 1976 book The Giraffe: its Biology, Behavior, and Ecology that she wrote with J. Bristol Foster their bible — reconnected with Dagg and soon she was feted at conferences and then headed back to Africa.
Dagg’s story from the early days in Africa through her academic disappointments, activism, prolific authorship and finally a rightful renaissance in the scientific community are all beautifully chronicled in filmmaker Alison Reid’s documentary film The Woman Who Loves Giraffes that opens here in Vancouver on Jan. 11 at Vancity Theatre.
“It’s ironic everyone I talk to since I have been making this film, mention giraffes and it’s like: ‘oh they are my favourite animals, I love giraffes.’ It’s ironic that both Anne and giraffes have been sort of flying under the radar,” said Reid in a recent interview.
For Dagg her academic anonymity was not only personally frustrating but it led to the life and plight of the giraffe being greatly ignored and certainly overshadowed by the other African animals.
“I’ve done everything you needed to be good and they just said: ‘oh, you’re a woman,’” Dagg says in the film as she recounts her academic story.
Watching the film it’s impossible not to bristle as one old boy (literally and figuratively) still today says he has no reason to apologize for turning down Dagg’s tenure request at University of Guelph in 1972.
For the record at the time Dagg had published 20 research papers and had been a successful and very productive assistant professor of zoology at Guelph.
“I think I would just turn and walk away,” said Dagg when asked what she would do if she was in the presence of one of those men who voted against her tenure. “There is nothing I could say that would make them know how much I despised them. And I was brought up to be polite to everyone.”
It’s the glaring gender inequity that Reid says has really fired up audiences who have already seen the movie at various festivals.
“Most people are horrified and galvanized by the treatment she received by academia. They are mad. Women stand up and say what the f--k?” said Reid who first came to this story almost a decade ago when she heard a CBC radio report about Dagg.
It struck her that this story would make a great feature film. So she set about securing the rights to Dagg’s 2006 memoir Pursuing Giraffe. However, plans changed once she learned Dagg was about to head back to Africa for the first time since her 1956 trip.
Reid felt it was historic and had to be recorded. So the feature idea was filed and Reid changed her focus to a documentary lens.
"I told her my core interest was in the woman the adventurous, tenacious woman and she didn’t want it to be about her. She wanted it to be about giraffe conservation, how can we help the giraffe,” said Reid. “My pitch to her was: ‘look Anne it’s hard for people to watch those conservation documentaries. I’m an animal lover, but it is just really hard, but if there is a personal story. If you can take people on your journey with you and fall in love with giraffes and learn about giraffes as you did then they are connected to it and I think that’s a friendlier and gentler way into the conservation story,’ and she bought that.”
As for the feature film idea Reid’s plan is get back to work on the script once she finishes her directing gig on the TV series Hudson & Rex.
“I still intend to make that film,” said Reid. “There are so many layers to her story that are fascinating but that we couldn’t address in the documentary for many reasons so I am dying to do a scripted film that gives and even more in-depth view from that time period.”
Those layers and stories are all there in an amazing trove of source material including film footage from the day and every letter Dagg ever wrote or received.
“It was golden, absolutely golden,” said Reid about what she calls Dagg’s tendency to keep everything.
Dagg says she “loves,” how the film has turned out. She has seen it many times and feels it is an important piece of work that discusses and highlights universal human and animal issues.
“I hope that men will know how hurtful they can be when they treat women as inferior to men,” said Dagg. “I hope that people will be excited to know that they can send money to Africa to help save giraffe, and that they will send money; already, giraffe people are receiving funds because of the film. That makes me so happy!”
With Reid readying to focus on a feature film does the almost 86-year-old zoologist have any thoughts on who should play her in that movie?
“I don’t go to many movies, (except now ours!), so I have no idea really. Sorry,” says Dagg. “(But) I hope it will be someone who loves life and shows it.”