The North East Film Archive is one of a network of regional film archives established to collect, preserve and show film made in, or about the North East of England. Our collections are non-fiction, and date from the early 1900s to the present day, providing a rich record of life in the region over the 20th century. Many of our films are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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How the Whale Got his Throat
Travel into the belly of whale lore with Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical tale for little children.
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Overview
A small, (a)Stute Fish called Pingle and a shipwrecked Scots mariner in suspenders outwit the first and greediest whale in the world. A colourful, comic animation by Sheila Graber brings to life Rudyard Kipling’s jocular origin tale about an imaginary Leviathan, inspired by the Old Testament bible story of Jonah, Homer’s Odyssey and The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Out of all the Just So Stories, Sheila Graber declares the whale fable characters her favourites. As a child, she remembers her father, Captain GW Graber, a River Tyne pilot between 1948 and 1964, pointing out the awesome whaling ships berthed on the South Shields Quay for their summer refits. She was unaware of the shocking reality of bloody butchery that the industry entailed, which drove whales to near-extinction. The rivers Tyne and Tees were once centres of whaling ship construction and trade but Norwegian-British whaling came to an end in 1963. Graber’s Just So Stories were commissioned by Nicole Jouve of Interama, French agent for The Magic Roundabout, and were first broadcast on French TV in 1983.
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