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Renowed 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
abd fir 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 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 Shark 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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