Business houses must fund wildlife films: Schaller

Second day of CMS VATAVARAN’s environment and wildlife film festival

Yogesh Mishra

New Delhi, December 07, 2011

The second day of the sixth international edition of CMS VATAVARAN, India’s environment and wildlife film festival, was an action packed affair with the participation of several Indian and International filmmakers and wildlife experts.

Master classes by Dr George Schaller, Andie Clare, Evert Van Den Boss, Ralf Quibeldey trade show by Franz Kraus, Indian and International film screenings, open forums and comic making workshop for children remained the highlights of day 2 of the festival.

Dr George Schaller interacts with wildlife
filmmakers during CMS VATAVARAN film festival

In a special master class on the theme of “Films as a tool in propagating biodiversity conservation”, the world renowned conservationist Dr George Schaller shared his experience of films playing an impactful role in saving the environment.

He claimed that though awareness today is greater than what it was ever before, but at the same time biodiversity loss is continuing at an alarming rate.

When asked what the filmmakers need to do, he said, “The filmmakers have to keep in mind that there isn’t a need to produce a plethora of films. Rather one film with spectacular footage would be enough to deliver its message loud and clear.”

Talking on the issue of funding, Dr Schaller said the big business houses have the money but they aren’t investing much, even if they have the moral responsibility to maintain the ecological balance as they are using the natural resources the most.

“So, when the giant corporations are backtracking, it’s the government which should to step in and provide funds to budding film makers,” he said.

Ralf Quibeldey from NDR Germany talks to
movie makers during CMS Vatavaran film fest

Ralf Quibeldey, commissioning editor from NDR, Germany during his session talked about various elements which have to be kept in mind while shooting a film which were process of making film, budget and more important the reason of making  film which includes audience and self satisfaction to be kept in mind .He criticised narrative script writing and natural flow scripting during the film making.

In the second half master classes by Andie Clare from Icon Films, UK was organised.

Prominent films that were screened today includes - Amazon Alive: Hidden Secrets, The Miracle water village, Melting paradise, Blood and Iron, Broken Tail and several others.

Several filmmakers like Snehasis Das, Naresh Bedi, Ajay Bedi, Ashish Chandola, Akanksha Joshi, Nandan Saxena and several other were present on Wednesday. Senani Hegde director of the award winning film “The Pack-5 Episodes”, during the open forum on biodiversity talked about his experience while directing the movie. It took two years for him to make this movie. The major challenge was to find wild dogs, because wild dogs could only be seen once in 15 days and gets vanished in no time, he said.