Let Us Be Heroes
I will never forget the TV Commercial 'Dumb Animals' created for Greenpeace and its Anti-Fur campaign by David Bailey, the famous photographer and director.
The runway was flanked by gawping potential buyers drooling over the fur coats that bedecked the models as they flounced by.
Until suddenly their faces were being spattered by blood as the models started twirling their fur coats in a whirling dervish.
As the last model marched back down the runway past a horror-struck audience, the coat trailed along the floor leaving a long gash of blood.
The subsequent billboard poster of a model with a fur coat flung over her shoulder and trailing blood, hit the streets.
The image of fur and blood was indelibly burned onto my retina. I could never un-see the message it left.
But it was easy for me to say ‘I will never wear fur.’ I couldn’t afford fur.
What I didn’t see, was that leather and sheepskin were also animals’ skins, stripped from their backs in a similar way. I didn’t make the connection, so I kept buying and wearing them.
Gradually faux-fur, faux-sheepskin and pleathers brought the price down of clothes masquerading as animals’ skins, so I bought into that.
And then I became vegan and started buying vegan trainers.
But it was all done relatively unconsciously.
Until I watched the feature documentary Slay. This film had the same impact on me as the David Bailey Anti-fur campaign.
Except this time I was implicated. I was still buying leather goods- without a second thought as to how it ended up as a bag, or a belt or a pair of boots.
Once I knew, I couldn’t un-know. And so I made my decision.
I decided to Choose for Good. The good of the animals and the good of the planet.
And I interviewed the director of the film Rebecca Cappelli on Brave New Girl podcast to find out how she came to the same decision and how she came to make a film about it.
CHOOSE FOR GOOD
Let’s make better choices for the welfare of animals and the good of the planet.
Rebecca Cappelli is an award-winning filmmaker & public speaker. A French citizen and a mandarin speaking professional, Rebecca leads the non-profit project Let us be Heroes for the health of people, animals & the planet. She is the director of SLAY, a feature documentary about inhumane practices involving animals in the fashion industry.
Rebecca went to China alone at 18 years old to study Chinese mandarin, then had to graduate in France because Chinese unis were not recognised internationally, then she moved back to China at 25. Her China dog is rescued from dog meat and he made her think more of how we treat animals, then in 2015 she had a spontaneous awakening
She decided to turn to filmmaking to reach more people in 2018 (Let us be Heroes) and started to make SLAY early 2019. Her mission is to expose bad practices, and help people reconnect with their emotional intelligence through the power of cinematic communication.
97% of fashion students surveyed after watching SLAY declare not wanting to use any animal skins in their careers (that was 37% before watching)
Thanks so much Rebecca for the powerful work you do in raising awareness around animal welfare in the fashion industry and for creating a film that holds up a mirror to any of us who still buy clothes and accessories that contain animal skins.
Thanks also for showing us how to open our eyes and make different choices for the benefit of the world we live in & for those sentient creatures we share the planet with.
You can find out more about Rebecca’s work on https://www.letusbeheroes.com/ and follow her on Instagram @Letusbeheroes and @slay.film
YOUR STORY MATTERS
By sharing what you do and why you do it you can positively impact the lives of others. Podcast guesting is a powerful way to get your voice heard above the noise.