Documentaries We Recommend
The documentaries that we share on BearKind show—emotionally, scientifically, and through lived experience—what becomes possible when people choose respect and relationship over fear. When we recognize a bear as a sentient being with his own personality, intelligence, and inner life, both our behaviour and our intentions shift. And when our intentions shift, they set the tone for how we act: understanding grows into compassion, and compassion becomes protection. This is the heart of BearKind—knowledge that leads to compassionate action and deep, intentional kindness.
The following three videos are by Phil Timpany. He is a world-renowned, Yukon-based bear specialist who has worked with grizzlies since the early 1990’s. He is a founder and guide at Nakina Adventures, where he leads wilderness trips and bear-viewing experiences. His work focuses on documenting bear behavior and helping people understand grizzly behavior so that people and bears can safely coexist.
My Octopus Teacher
In “My Octopus Teacher”, Craig Foster learns that the octopus isn’t a curiosity – she’s a mind, a presence, a teacher. Her intelligence and unique ways of being is simply her being an octopus, yet her tenderness, her curiosity, her fear, her trust are instantly recognizable by humans.
The film shows what happens when a humans manage their unfounded fears of others, stop trying to dominate and starts to relate by working towards really “seeing” one another.
My work with bears is the same.
When people see a bear not as a threat but as a sentient being – with
personality, memory, and emotion all similar to ours – the boundary between “human” and “bear” dissolves, just as it did between “human” and “octopus”.
The Octopus Teacher reveals that empathy is not a human invention; it’s a universal language of life…
-Ellie
Further Reading
- Advocating for the souls of animals / An interview with Gay Bradshaw Advocating for the souls of animals | An interview with Gay Bradshaw