Storytelling Arts

Transformational tales about animal individuals and the people changed by them

Two stories — one true, one fictional — share the tales of animal individuals on unlikely journeys to freedom (as told thru the medium of film) and of the people who are changed by them, in this glimpse into the power of the storytelling arts in creative advocacy for animal lives.

The program features presentations by Jusep Moreno for the story of “When Pigs Escape” and Victoria Moran for the story of “Miss Liberty,” and closes with a roundtable discussion about the importance of animal stories with ANIMAL STORY co-partners - host Lisa Levinson, co-director Zipora Schultz, and project coordinator Ellie Sarty for Compassion Arts.

When Pigs Escape

From Jusep Moreno, the true story of Matilda is offered in When Pigs Escape, a 2022 award-winning independent documentary about the real-life journey of a pig who escaped from a farm to give birth to her piglets in a nearby woodland. When Pigs Escape recounts the story of Matilda, the efforts by people to save the pig family, and follows the new life of Matilda and her babies after being rescued. It is a biographical piece that invites us to look at pigs like we have never seen them before.

About Jusep Moreno

Jusep Moreno is a Catalan filmmaker based in the UK, with an interest in exploring the power of film to create change and educate about social issues. When Pigs Escape is his first documentary. A 2022 Culture and Animals Foundation grant honoree for this documentary, Jusep’s story of When Pigs Escape invites us to reconsider how we relate to these individuals and their families, and to other animal individuals who are farmed for food.

Jusep writes:

The mission of this documentary is to advocate for pigs, the most exploited mammal on Earth, and to offer humans an opportunity to get to know these animals so that we can change the way we interact with them as individuals and as a society. Currently, pigs are subjected to extensive harm, and their most basic rights are systematically violated. At the same time, most humans only interact with these animals when they eat them, and we mostly see them alive either exploited in farms or in trucks on the way to the slaughterhouse.

The documentary and has been shown in more than two-dozen festivals and received awards from IndieFEST, Impact Docs, and S.O.F.A. Tails, and was also an official selection at the International Vegan Film Festival, Cardiff International Film Festival, International Social Change Film Festival, and Stockholm City Film Festival.

Miss Liberty

About Animal Story

A Partnered Program Series

ANIMAL STORY is a Compassion Arts Partnered Program in the storytelling arts for sharing transformational stories about animal individuals and the people who are changed by them.

For the past five years, Compassion Arts has been exploring different approaches to the storytelling arts for animal advocacy through programs such as true storytelling workshops by TMI Project in 2018 & 2020, interactive storytelling theater with True Story Playback Theater in 2019, multi-arts narrative projects with Michael Harren in 2018 & 2019 and Write Like An Animal Persona Poem workshop with Gretchen Primack in 2021. We are grateful for these amazing past programs that have been instrumental in shaping the ANIMAL STORY journey.

Moving forward, ANIMAL STORY will begin offering workshops, story slam events, and bi-annual programs in the storytelling arts about the lives of other species, in collaboration with Lisa Levinson of In Defense of Animals and Zipora Schultz of Public Eye Artists for Animals.