Matt Maraynes
Filmmaker Matt Maraynes received a grant for The Loneliest Shrimp in the World (working title), a short documentary about the last surviving Hawaiian reef shrimp living in a self-contained ecosystem gifted to him over a decade ago. The ecosystem—a glass sphere about the size of a softball—once contained a lush environment filled with shrimp and other biota and abiota, including algae, bacteria, and a piece of coral. Now, after years spent gathering dust on a shelf in the filmmaker’s childhood home, a single shrimp (named Vincent) remains.
The short film will explore what it might be like to be a shrimp living alone in a decaying ecosystem and will serve as a microcosmic metaphor. As the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic activity on Earth grow more apparent, humanity is at a pivotal juncture in the trajectory of our relationship to the nonhuman world. The way in which we relate to animals raises questions about our ability to coexist and support the continued flourishing of life on the planet. Along with the film’s meditative approach, the story will be grounded in the filmmaker’s attempt to build the shrimp a better habitat.
Since receiving the grant, Matt has recorded seven interviews with experts and conducted many hours of filming, using a special lens capable of capturing Vincent’s microenvironment in macro focus. He has also created a new habitat for Vincent: a five-gallon fish tank filled with crushed coral, lava rocks, artificial structures, and artificial seawater. He has adopted seven Hawaiian shrimp (who’d otherwise have been used in experiments), and welcomed them to the tank. All that remains is to (slowly) introduce Vincent to the other shrimp—maximizing in every way the shrimps’ welfare—and to finish the film.
Matt Maraynes (pictured with his other companion animal, Finn) is the Deputy Director of the Whale Sanctuary Project, and a founder of Place for Animals, a creative collective formed to use storytelling to improve the lives of nonhuman animals. Matt graduated with an MA in Animal Studies from New York University in 2022, where he took Animals, Art, and Technology, a class taught by 2017 grantee Gal Nissim. For this course, he made two films: Looking at Animals and Leather Memories (with Laura Alvear Roa). He also produced, for the Whale Sanctuary Project, How Does a Whale Say Thank You?