Sally Aitken is an Emmy-nominated director and writer, and showrunner of multiple international series. Her award-winning work includes the Camera d’Or-nominated feature documentary “A Cinematic Life,” selected for the Cannes Film Festival, and the “David Stratton’s Stories of Australian Cinema” episodes she wrote and directed, nominated for an International Emmy. Aikten wrote and directed “Streets of Your Town,” for which she collected both the Australian Director’s Guild and the Australian Writer’s Award for Best Documentary series.

“Playing with Sharks” is screening at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place online and in person via Satellite Screens January 28-February 3.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

SA: For most people, sharks are terrifying. Fortunately, our protagonist isn’t like most people! “Playing with Sharks” is one woman’s incredible life becoming a pioneering diver, maverick shark expert, and fearless underwater icon.

As a glamorous and lethal spearfishing champion in the 1960s, Valerie Taylor knows how to track and hunt fish – and – attract sharks. So, decades before anyone else, she and her husband Ron made sharks “their thing,” filming the first images in the world of Great White sharks swimming underwater and shooting all the underwater live shark footage for “Jaws.”

A personal epiphany sees Valerie radically transform into a marine conservationist at a time when the very word “conservation” radical. Valerie swims against the tide of human misconception of sharks to change the way we feel about the ocean’s most powerful predators before it’s too late.

From turning herself into shark bait to prove sharks are not out to get us, to taking on the highest levels of government to fight for their protection, Valerie remains one of the world’s most outspoken and passionate advocates for sharks. Incredibly, she is still free swimming with bull sharks at the age of 85.

Her underwater life, filmed for more than seven decades, is a visually sumptuous real journey into the realm of the shark with stunning remastered underwater film footage, meaning the film is also a historic record of how our oceans once were.

Featuring a stranger than fiction script, a magnetic heroine, and that most charismatic but terrifying of screen creatures, “Playing with Sharks” is an unforgettable story, especially on the big screen — and it might just also change the way you feel about sharks.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

SA: In addition to the absolutely remarkable archive — and those James Bond-like swimming costumes — the opportunity to see femaleness in unexpected ways on the big screen was a powerful draw for me.

As a 12-year-old girl stricken with polio in the late 1940s, Valerie is immobile and scared. She wills her arms to work, so that she can turn the pages of her beloved “Boys’ Own” adventure stories to get through the ordeal. After she recovers, Valerie determines she will be the heroine of her own adventurous life. She doesn’t know how she will fulfill her manifest destiny but a chance encounter with a hand-made diving facemask as a teenager gives her a vision of her future.

Fast-forward to the present day and she’s dived all the oceans of the world and made unique, enduring friendships with powerful apex predators: sharks. This octogenarian is still seeking new adventures and fighting for the sharks’ right to exist. In all, she remains open to the thrill of the unexpected. To me, Valerie is a role model for any young person seeking their calling, as much as she’s a role model for all ages, living a passionate life full of purpose.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

SA: Gosh, if they’re thinking about the film and not what they did with the parking ticket, we’re winning! Films are subjective so it’s difficult to know exactly how people will respond.

Fundamentally, I hope audiences are moved and inspired by Valerie’s story. My work is often characterized as accessible and emotional, with storytelling that never feels earnest or overbearing. If the film resonates in an emotional way that would be excellent.

I like to think of Valerie as an “accidental conservationist,” and this movie is very much not your typical conservation film. Hopefully, the force of Valerie’s unique story and our techniques of intercutting the present with the archive compels and empowers people to consider the fragility of our oceans and the need to protect them.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

SA: Without doubt, our greatest challenge was determining what to leave out of the film. Distilling a long, rich life to its emotional essence was a process of refinement and getting through a truck-ton of archive. We had access to Valerie’s handwritten diaries — every year since 1969 — along with footage shot across seven decades! This meant the archive volume was simply staggering.

Valerie’s exploits include amazing anecdotes, and many twists and turns you want to include. For example, her sustained relationship with a moray eel for over 35 years; her macro underwater photography that wowed National Geographic in 1973; saving herself from drowning, using only her hair ribbons; and even teaching Mick Jagger to scuba dive. If you can believe it, these are the stories we left behind!

But through it all, always, there were sharks. We focused on Valerie’s unique experiences “playing” with sharks, and her enduring advocacy for these commanding animals. It’s a relationship most people are too afraid to entertain, and certainly an unforgettable one on a big screen.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made. 

SA: Our producer, renowned natural history filmmaker Bettina Dalton, has long been a friend of Valerie’s after working together some 20 years previously. They had remained close but it wasn’t until Bettina saw “Jane” that she had a light bulb moment. Bettina suddenly realized she knew an equally remarkable female heroine of the natural world, someone who, like Jane, made important firsthand observations and whose life had been captured in the stunning archive. Bettina knew these were filmic riches waiting to be put together in a feature documentary. Then she approached me to see if I’d be interested in taking it on.

Bettina first pitched the film at Sundance in 2019. Dogwoof was instantly attracted to the unorthodox lead female, its charismatic subject matter, and conservation angle.

Of course, no film financing comes easy. Completing the finance puzzle required sustained effort from Bettina and Wildbear Entertainment. After rewriting the pitch materials, creating a new sizzle, and with the support of Australian funding agencies Screen Australia and Screen NSW, and local distributor Madman, we completed the puzzle.

Then there was just the small matter of making the film — and post-producing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

SA: I think it’s a natural curiosity about the world and a love of visual imagery that can convey so much in a single frame. A rear-view image of a woman gazing out a window — what lies beyond the frame? Who is she? What is she looking at?

I also believe ordinary people live extraordinary lives, and that the world is full of complexities and unknown delights, so I love the privilege of documentary, entering into these unseen worlds. I am inspired by work that privileges overlooked or unknown perspectives.

In the words of a respected colleague, a historian with a passion for female stories, “If you ask different questions of the archive, you’ll get different answers.” This mantra holds true in all aspects of filmmaking, be it documenting reality or reflecting experience, it’s a mantra I try and govern all my work by.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

SA: I’ve been racking my brain about answering this and it suddenly struck me: the reason I’m searching so hard for an answer is that I haven’t received much advice over the years. I then immediately blamed myself: I’m a woman. I haven’t asked for insights and strategic wisdoms, but I know plenty of men who get the collegiate backslapping beers and advice session — and they’ve never had to ask for a seat at that bar!

This all-important idea of the passing on of wisdoms might be another insidious way women’s ambitions are not recognized. The implicit bias that women will “get there” on our own steam, thus are not offered help, makes me sad for the missed opportunities to solicit creative and strategic wisdoms. I don’t think it’s my own reserve. I think it’s something more profound. So thank you for asking because I’m now conscious of ensuring the women who work with me might appreciate me passing on learned experiences, which they can use — or ignore — as they want!

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?

SA: The first thing I’d say is that the gender bias is real but not insurmountable, and certainly a catalyst to help change things for the better.

We know the industry has much to gain by empowering women. For one, by far and away women are more likely to employ other women, and female perspectives help color our world. Reach out, reach sideways, reach upwards, and importantly, reach down. Build solidarity across place and time so that we all can benefit from fresh ideas, especially yours.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

SA: “The Piano” by Jane Campion was a revelation for me. I was a teenager when I saw the film, and its extraordinary performances, sublime landscape, gothic color palette, and haunting score by Michael Nyman all stayed with me for days afterward. In fact, those images have never left.

It’s an exquisitely beautiful film and essentially female. It was also potent because it was the first film I remember that depicted my place geographically — I am New Zealand-born-and-raised— in the windswept coastlines, the brooding and unforgiving bush, and the absurdity of a piano on a surf beach. The film depicted also my place as a woman, both historically and presently. I couldn’t articulate it then but it’s an experience of desire that is utterly masterful.

I had the fortune of meeting Jane Campion at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, so I was so happy to be able to tell her what the film had meant to me. I also felt the weird serendipity of my worlds had colliding because I was working with Sam Neill — a lead actor in “The Piano” — at the time.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

SA: I have three kids: I’m just keeping afloat! I feel so lucky that in our pandemic experience in Australia and New Zealand is managed with strong restrictions that have minimized community transmission. I try to stay creative by being open to new concepts and influences. I watch new work and read.

There is demand from international productions to continue to produce great work here and there is a local appetite — and ability — to do so. So many things — good deeds, new ideas, selflessness, and the beauty in nature — inspire me creatively. For instance, I saw the most stunning footage the other day from a Danish photographer, Søren Solkær, who has spent hours capturing starling murmuration. It was completely mesmerizing

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

SA: Knowing the biases of the film industry’s history is the first step to correction: more people of color and those with diverse backgrounds engaged in all spheres of the industry chain as writers and creators, as well as members of selection panels, juries, funding bodies.

Looking at nuanced narratives is important. People are individuals, not stereotypes, and certainly not scenery. Like a Bechdel test observing if women talk about something other than men, let’s ask if the characters have fully realized lives, or are they background to white stories?

Lastly, increasing opportunities for paid mentorship and language everywhere.