[Editor’s note: a message to our little girls growing up: women are the new warriors in the 21st century. We'd like to make this an ongoing series that documents some of the incredible achievements, barriers broken, and amazing adventures of women who are shattering records and old, stereotyped expectations, and ushering in a new era of woman power—perhaps just in time. Please let us know in the comments below who you'd like us to profile.]
Olivia O Wyatt is an entire realm unto herself. She is both lioness and lamb, Blackbeard and Mother Teresa, artist and voyeur. Make no mistake, too, she is both the magician and the possessed, master of the inner planes and dabbler in the occult, poetess extraordinaire in four dimensions. Possessing an almost surreal talent for seeing the essence ― the common denominators ― in human behavioral patterns, she is obsessed with documenting the last of the old-world ethnography belonging to the indigenous people around the world whose message we now, to our demise, think is irrelevant.
On the earth plane, Olivia Wyatt is an award-winning filmmaker, television director and producer, photographer, published writer/poet, U.S. Coast Guard credentialed sea captain and transpacific solo mariner. These days, she often works from her sailboat, and sometimes from the helm of her sailboat, by iPhone, while navigating Hawaiian waters. This is what multitasking looks like in the realm that Olivia Wyatt inhabits.
Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, she has a university degree in Journalism, and has traveled to more than 25 countries, creating ethnographic films along the way. Her focus has always been on preserving for archive, and viewer education and entertainment, the traditions of indigenous communities around the world as they exist today.
Her current project involves an ethnographic film journey that traces worldwide migratory routes of whales. She's looking at humpback whale acoustics from the perspective of indigenous communities who live in whale feeding and breeding grounds. She hopes to capture for us, and for future generations, the indelible mark that these encounters have left on the people they have touched.
As one might have guessed, if you knew Olivia Wyatt, this will not be your ordinary “shoot.” She will not be flying to locations. She will, instead, be single-handing her 38’ sailing vessel, Juniper, around the world, retracing these annual voyages of migratory whales. As this is being written, she is rapidly closing in on her upcoming solo voyage to French Polynesia, some 2,630 miles southeast of the Hawaiian Islands. Her sailing skills are impressive and improving daily ― her passion for sailing runs deep. To be clear, this is a woman who fantasizes about sailing around places like Cape Horn, some of the most dangerous waters in the world.
As of this writing, Olivia Wyatt is in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. She single-handed here from San Diego in late summer, 2019, on board her rainbow-drenched Juniper. During the short time that she’s actually been here (she arrived, put her sailboat to bed, then flew to LA to produce a television series, after which she flew to Uruguay to stay on a sheep farm), she’s already sail-explored much of this island. Had there not been an inter-island ban (coronavirus) on travel, there is little doubt that she and Juniper would have already visited all of the main Hawaiian Islands in the archipelago. I’m still trying to track down the source of her dilithium-crystal-like energy.
Her film, “Sailing a Sinking Sea,” an ethnographic documentary (70 min.), captured the hearts and minds of viewers at the Singapore Film Festival in 2015, where her film won the Audience Choice Award. The film focuses on the Moken people, a nomadic seafaring community in the Andaman Sea that is now experiencing the impact of global warming on its ages-old lifestyle. In addition to her ethnographic films, she's produced numerous art films (some of which, I feel certain, would have gotten the attention of the likes of Andy Warhol, et al), and has produced a multitude of television shows.
Perhaps most importantly is Wyatt’s interest, concern, and love for planet Earth and the people who live here. This theme seemed especially central to her "Sailing a Sinking Sea" documentary; the Moken people are rapidly facing an existential crisis due to accelerating global shifts and the threat of a global warming catastrophe. One wonders if she will, during the making of her upcoming documentary, uncover an urgent message for humanity in the sounds coming from the whales whose history is far longer than ours on Planet Earth.
As you’ll see in the video below, there is a lightness to Olivia Wyatt . . . but don’t make the mistake of confusing this “lightness” with lightweight, because Olivia Wyatt is most certainly a one-woman tour de force whose work will not easily be forgotten by those who see it.
In this recent and magical collab between one of my new favorite musicians, Bonnie Prince Billy [Oldham], and Olivia O Wyatt, the viewer gets a glimpse of the simultaneous lightness and power of the Wyatt phenomenon: “This is Far From Over”
You can visit with Olivia Wyatt on her blog: Wilderness of Waves
One thought on “A message to our little girls, women are the New Warriors: We’re Sailing a Sinking Sea . . . and Why Award-Winning Filmmaker Olivia O Wyatt’s Work is so Important”