Stony Brook University Professor Featured in PBS Doc

STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR FEATURED IN DOCUMENTARY EXPLORING THE COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE AND PIGS

MAGNIFICENT BEAST

Premieres Thursday, March 31 at 10 pm on WLIW/ch. 21

Documentary Traces the History of Pigs as Humans’ Food, Friend, and Foe Through the Centuries

Stony Brook University Zooarchaeologist Dr. Katheryn Twiss Interviewed

No other animal has had such a paradoxical relationship with humans as the pig. Magnificent Beast explores centuries of our entwined history with pigs as food, friend, and foe. The one-hour film travels from New York to New Mexico, Colorado to Cairo, New England to the United Kingdom, Florida, and Texas to talk to archaeologists, historians, farmers, chefs, hunters, and pet owners, and discover the roots and results of the complicated bond between people and pigs.

As zooarchaeologist Dr. Katheryn Twiss of Stony Brook University explains in the film during its exploration of the domestication of these animals, forensically, humans and pigs share a surprisingly similar trait – our teeth.

Magnificent Beast premieres on WLIW ch. 21 on Thursday, March 31 at 10 pm. It will also air locally on WLIW's WORLD channel on Sunday, April 10 at 9 pm. The documentary airs on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings) and streams on PBS.org. It is distributed by the National Educational Television Association (NETA).

This engaging documentary examines the domesticated pig - as well as its feral swine cousin - from snout to tail, revealing the unique ways this animal has become an integral part of human history and the center of debate wherever it appeared. The filmmakers interview archeologists about the pig’s first appearance in a variety of civilizations and cultures, and the mutual dependence of humans and pigs through centuries. The cultural choice of whether to eat or not eat pigs is a central part of the story told, as historians, Jews, and Muslims in the United States and Egypt weigh in about the origins of the “pork taboo” and chefs and farmers praise the pig’s versatility in visits to restaurants and food festivals. Pet pig owners– as well as the leaders of a pig rescue for those abandoned when mini breeds and other pigs don’t turn out as expected - share their experience with this highly intelligent animal. And on the darker side of the pig/people relationship, the documentary visits with the USDA as well as hunters focused on the ways in which subversive feral swine wreak havoc on the health and safety of livestock and farmers.

Magnificent Beast has been featured at the Washington Jewish Film Festival, DOCUTAH, the Edmonton International Film Festival and the Miami Jewish Film Festival.

About Donkey Universe Films

Donkey Universe Films is an independent film production company based in Maine. Co-director and producer Tess Gerritsen is an internationally bestselling thriller author whose 28 novels include the Rizzoli and Isles crime novels, on which the hit TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” was based. She is also a screenwriter (“Adrift,” “Island Zero”). Magnificent Beast is her second collaboration with her son Josh. Co-director and producer Josh Gerritsen began his career in short films and portrait photography before starting an organic farm, an experience that inspired Magnificent Beast.