INDIAN WILDLIFE FILMS RECEIVE INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION

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Indian Filmmakers Gain UK Environment Fellowships

Written by James MacGregor Wednesday, 09 August 2006

 

Films To Air on Discovery Channel & Wildscreen Festival

 

Seven Indian wildlife documentary filmmakers have been awarded British

Environment Film Fellowships for 2006. The fellowships, worth Rs 600,000

each, have been awarded to Sonya V Kapoor, Himanshu Malhotra, Jay

Mazoomdar, Gurmeet Sapal, Kalpana Subramanian, Ashima Narain and Balan for

film work towards checking wildlife crimes.

 

" India is home to thousands of rare flora and fauna including the tiger,

the sloth bear and the musk deer among many other endangered species " -

Michael Arthur, British High Commissioner

" Wildlife crime is an issue of grave concern for all of us today. India is

home to thousands of rare flora and fauna including the tiger, the sloth

bear and the musk deer among many other endangered species, " British High

Commissioner to India Michael Arthur said while announcing the fellowships.

 

" We all have a role to play in helping to sustain this rich diversity and

today, we are offering seven fellowships worth Rs 600,000 each to these

enterprising filmmakers to document these challenges. Through this

collaborative endeavour between the UK and Indian filmmakers, we hope to

address the larger issues of conservation of some of the world's rarest

species, " he added.

 

The documentary filmmakers are expected to complete their work by December.

The films they make will be aired on Discovery Channel and screened at the

Wildscreen Festival, to be held for the first time in India in January 2007

 

Wildscreen is the world's largest and most prestigious international

wildlife and environmental film festival. It is organised every two years in

Bristol.

 

FILM FOCUS

 

The fellowship films all focus on the problems faced by very diverse

species.

 

Sonya Kapoor's Once There Was a Purple Butterfly looks at the extinction of

butterflies across the Indian subcontinent, while Gurmeet Sapal's Killers of

the King shows the beauty and the vulnerability of leopards in the hills of

Uttaranchal.

 

Himanshu Malhotra's Vanishing Seas will deal with marine trade. that is not

only depleting the seas, but is also endangering the habitat.

 

The endangered tiger and the forest-dwellers are the focus of Jay

Mazoomdar's film The Hunted. The filmmaker will try to show the need to

offer hunters a viable alternative livelihood, to steer them away from the

hunting and tiger trades.

 

Kalpana Subramanian's Turtles in a Soup will highlight the turtle poaching

and turtle trade in the Gangetic river basin and Kolkata markets, while

Ashima Narain's The Last Dance will examine the Indian Sloth bear poaching

syndicate operating both within India and across the borders.

 

Crimes on domesticated and wild elephants in Kerala - will be shown in

Balan's The Silenced Witness.