{"id":37408,"date":"2019-09-13T11:23:04","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T15:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/?post_type=r_cas_magazine&p=37408"},"modified":"2019-10-03T16:10:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T20:10:50","slug":"into-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"r_cas_magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/arts-sciences\/fall-2019\/into-the-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lindsey Parietti\u2019s (CAS\u201907, COM\u201907)\u00a0Blood Island<\/em> tells the story of chimpanzees abandoned by a laboratory on a series of Liberian islands.<\/p>\n

By Marc Chalufour | Photo by Tom Campbell<\/p>\n

T<\/span>he opening sequence of Blood Island<\/i> might as well be the start of the next film in the Planet of the Apes<\/i> franchise. The camera swoops toward the shore of a lush island, hovers over an abandoned laboratory, and then cuts to a shot of a chimpanzee staring out of a chain-link cage. Ominous music plays in the background. But Blood Island<\/i> isn\u2019t science fiction\u2014it\u2019s the true story of a group of chimpanzees subjected to decades of medical testing then abandoned on a series of islands in an estuary near the coast of Liberia.<\/p>\n

The chimps were used for hepatitis B vaccine testing by the New York Blood Center (NYBC) from 1974 until 2005. The 66 chimps, unfit to survive in the wild, \u201cweren\u2019t being fed sufficiently and were in pretty poor shape,\u201d says Blood Island<\/i>\u2019s creator Lindsey Parietti (CAS\u201907, COM\u201907). Her original mission was to create a film that would help the ongoing campaign to get NYBC to support the abandoned chimps. (The center agreed to provide $6 million for their care while Parietti was editing the film.)<\/p>\n

The film follows a group of volunteers, including former lab employees, dedicated to caring for the starving chimps. Joseph Thomas had worked in the lab for nearly 30 years. In that role, he helped researchers tranquilize chimpanzees and infect them with hepatitis B; one chimp was tranquilized more than 400 times. The first time Thomas appears on-screen, he hides his face in his hands as he describes the job. \u201cThey used to hate me,\u201d he says of the chimpanzees. But when NYBC ended its support of the chimps in 2015, Thomas stepped in and began coordinating daily trips to the islands to feed them.<\/p>\n

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The volunteers helping the chimps are led by former lab worker Joseph Thomas. From Blood Island<\/em><\/figcaption>

It took time for him to earn the chimps\u2019 trust. In a still image from a couple of years earlier, the chimps, skinny from starvation, snarl at the camera. But, as Parietti discovered by following Thomas and the other volunteers on a feeding trip to the islands, a lot has changed since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the feeding boat pulls up, the chimps come out, get their food, and sit around for maybe 20 minutes,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I only had a few minutes to get the shots I needed.\u201d Parietti says wildlife filmmaking is notoriously challenging, with some projects requiring up to five hours of footage to produce one edited minute of a film. She didn\u2019t have that luxury\u2014she had two days in Liberia.<\/p>\n

Making the most of that time, Parietti captured scenes of the chimps emerging from the forest and wading into the water to greet the boat, reaching out for fruit and rice balls, then sprinting across the beach and splashing playfully in the water. In one intimate moment, Thomas interacts with a chimpanzee, gently patting its head. They have come a long way from the lab.<\/p>\n