‘Echos of the Sound’— Emma Stafki, Local Filmmaker

Born and raised on the Key Peninsula, 20-year-old Emma Stafki comes from a family of artists and storytellers. One of the stories she heard from her grandparents as a child changed her life. As she became interested in photography and then filmmaking, the story she listened to growing up became a launching point in her filmmaking career.

Emma and her sister Annie have been taking photographs and making short films since 2016 when they were young teenagers looking for something to do one summer. They decided to make a film. What started as a lark became budding careers in photography for both.

They enjoyed working together and have created films they have entered into multiple film festivals, where they have won awards, including Best Director and Best Actress at the Gig Harbor Film Festival in 2016. Although Annie is five years younger than Emma, they have a close working relationship, which they expect to continue.

“Working on ‘Echoes of the Sound’ has been an incredible experience, and we look forward to producing many more documentaries together. Our differing strengths complement each other, making it really fun and exciting to work together,” Annie said.

They have formed their own production company, Two Girls Take on the World, and have a website at myactionscount.org. “We want to continue the documentary work,” Emma said.

Emma graduated from Peninsula High School, then enrolled at Pacific Lutheran University, graduating in spring 2024 with a degree in media and filmmaking.

One of her class assignments was to tell a story that had never been told before. She immediately thought of the story her grandparents had told many times, their eyewitness account of an orca capture — or kidnapping.

“The story haunts them to this day; it was very sad.” Emma first told the story in a podcast, then worked with her sister to create the documentary, her senior capstone project at PLU.

Emma’s grandparents, John and Andrea Jewell, live on the Vaughn waterfront. One day, in 1968, their attention was drawn to some commotion in the water, and they went to investigate. They soon realized that they were witnessing the capture of a young male orca. As the fisherman left the area with him, the other orca in the pod followed for miles. The Jewells were deeply affected by what they witnessed.

The young male orca was taken to Seattle for a time, then flown to Miami, Florida’s Seaquarium, where he was called Hugo. He died there 12 years later, in March 1980. He was about 15 years old when he apparently chose suicide, bashing his head against his tank walls until he died of a brain aneurysm. Orcas in the wild typically live for a century.

Emma and Annie created a 30-minute documentary called “Echoes of the Sound,” telling the traumatic story. Emma said she hoped to show the film on the Key Peninsula in the near future when final edits are complete.

The film follows the story of Hugo’s capture and tragic life alone in captivity. The film then expands to highlight the endangered state of the J, K, and L pods living in the Salish Sea. “It’s a call to action to save them,” Emma said. There are 73 surviving orcas in the Southern Resident group, down from a peak of 98 in 1995. Hugo was part of the L pod.

“My aspiration extends beyond filmmaking; it is rooted in a desire to make a tangible difference in our world,” Emma said.

“We interviewed 12 people for the documentary. We got some pretty big names in that industry, including Howard Garrett, who founded the Orca Network, Ric O’Berry, a former trainer of Hugo, currently a dolphin activist who works to free orcas and dolphins from captivity, and Lynne Barre, the recovery coordinator for the Southern Residents at NOAA.”

Emma said her family has always supported the sisters in their work.

“We are very proud,” said John Jewell, the Stafkis’ grandfather and well-known sculptor. “We love her enthusiasm and joy in discovery of her craft. She is thinking all the time about pictures. The quality grows and grows; she can hypnotize the viewer.”

Emma said, “Right now we want to focus on environmental activism through documentaries. I want people to know that this is a story that is bigger than all of us. It’s trying to get people to come together to support the Southern Resident orcas and save the species. They are a very small species of orca that are super endangered.”

Screening times and location for “Echoes of the Sound” can be found at myactionscount.org.