SUNDANCE 2021 PREMIERE – World-renowned diver and conservationist Valerie Taylor–sometimes known as “give-it-a-go Valerie”–is exuberant when she dives. “I usually get out of the water screaming my head off — with joy!” Playing With Sharks follows her life from when she got her start as a champion spear fisher in Australia in the male-dominated sport of the 1950s, up until today, when she is still diving and petting sharks and doing her damnedest to convince people to stop massacring them.

“I’ve only ever killed one shark,” she says. “I wish I hadn’t.”

She and her husband–diver and underwater filmmaker and photographer Ron Taylor–have spent their lives together, and both left tournament spear fishing together as they learned to love the denizens of the deep. “From now on I’m shooting them with my camera,” said Ron. Over the years their footage was featured in countless documentaries and films. The most notable of which is, of course, Stephen Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster, Jaws.

1971 saw the release of the film Blue Water, White Death (directed by Peter Gimbel) which featured Valerie and Ron touring with sport fishermen and marine biologists to film great white sharks alive and underwater, something that really didn’t exist before then. “The first great white shark I saw was like a freight train coming out of the mists” said Valerie.

Author and diver Peter Benchley was inspired to write the novel about a mythical 16-foot great white, Jaws, which was published in 1974.  When Spielberg bought the rights to make the film, he upped the size to 25 feet. But the first step was to gather the live footage, and who better than Valerie and Ron Taylor to get it? For some of the footage they used half-scale boats, props, and a diminutive stunt double.

And Jaws was a hit. Arguably the first real blockbuster movie. The level of success was surprising to Valerie, who thought it might be a mediocre B-grade film in the end. There was a problem with the movie, though: they did too good a job. “The public believed it. It astounded us all. You don’t go around New York fearing King Kong.”

But the damage was done. In the wake of the film it became common for machismo-fueled slaughter trips to kills as many sharks as possible. The population of sharks was decimated–and not just the great whites, but also utterly peaceful and puppyish species like the grey nurse shark.

The woman who once took the time to train a shark to approach her camera from the best direction to get the light was devastated, and she and Ron took to the airwaves in a campaign of public awareness and education.  “But they didn’t listen to me,” said Valerie. “Frankly they didn’t care. The killing still went on.”

But Valerie never gave up. “When I get my teeth stuck into an idea, I don’t let go.” Eventually, and with the help of Wendy and Peter Benchley, through writing legislators and raising funds for conservation efforts, the grey nurse shark became the first shark species ever to become protected.  And on the site of much of the Jaws footage? The Ron and Valerie Taylor Marine Park.

Playing With Sharks is a beautiful documentary that covers a lot of history, but it is about the indomitable spirit of one person whose love of adventure and nature has never stopped. “I will probably be diving when I am in a wheelchair,” she says now, at 85. “There’s no gravity, I can fly!”

9 out of 10 Great Whites