INDIAN WILDLIFE FILM MAKER TO HEAD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

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Indian heading International Jury of Brazil Film Festival

New Delhi | November 06, 2005 4:39:54 PM IST

 

 

Renowned filmmaker and conservationist Mike Pandey who has won the Green Oscar

three times is heading the jury of Brazil’s International Film Festival -

‘Amazonas Film Festival De Aventura’ - which commenced this week.

The Amazonas film festival which is held in the middle of the rain forests of

Brazil focuses on both feature and non feature films. The festival began on

November four and will continue for a week. The Opening film was a Robert

Redford George freeman Jennifer Lopez starrer -An Unfinished Life' by Lasse

Hallstrom.

 

Roman Polanski's film Oliver twist will be the closing film for the festival.

 

Mike's Riverbank Studios also won two national awards for his films 'The Shores

of Silence' and for '‘The Living Fossil - Indian Horseshoe Crab’, one produced

by his wife Ranjana and the other by Gautam Pandey. Both films have made the

government act on conserving these species which had become endangered.

 

In 1994, he became the first Asian to win the Wildscreen Panda Award, also known

as the Green Oscar, for his film 'The Last Migration - Wild Elephant Capture in

Sarguja'. In 2000, his film Shores of Silence - Whale Sharks in India, won the

Green Oscar for the second time. The third award came last year for another film

on elephants - 'Vanishing Giants'.

 

Mike is also the first filmmaker to be awarded the prestigious United Nations

International Award for Outstanding Achievement in Global Conservation, the

Prithvi Ratan or ‘Son of the Earth’ at the Vatavaran Film Festival in November

2003, for his outstanding contribution towards generating awareness which led to

the conservation of a global heritage - the Whale Shark.

 

Earlier, Mike has served as a member of the jury Wildscreen Panda awards.

Several other documentaries made by Mike have won national and international

awards. 'Earth Matters', an environment and wildlife serial produced and

directed for Doordarshan, also won one of the most prestigious awards for

science films at the Scientific Film Festival at the Tower Eiffel. Another

‘Earth Matters’ programme on oceans won an award at the Cineciencia Festival in

Portugal.

 

While ‘Shores of Silence - Whale Sharks in India’ also bagged the Honour of

Knowledge Award at the Ekotopfilm 2000 Festival at Bratislava in the Slovak

Republic, another film by Mike, ‘Honey Hunters of the Blue Mountains’ has

received an award at the Earth Vision 2000 Festival in Santa Cruz in the USA.

Both ‘Honey Hunters of the Blue Mountains’ and 'The Living Fossil - Indian

Horseshoe Crab’ were also screened at the Wildscreen Festival. A shorter news

version of ‘Shores of Silence - Whale Sharks in India’ made under the ‘Earth

Matters’ programme for Doordarshan also recently received the Commonwealth

Association Award. Mike has not only directed these films, but also filmed them

himself.

 

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