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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 ranjan 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 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 ‘Shore 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 Mountaisn’ 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
Asociation Award. Mike has not only directed these
films, but also filmed them himself.
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