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Capturing India's fascinating wildlife on film  (FEATURE)
By Frederick Noronha, Indo-Asian News Service

Bangalore, May 28 (IANS) India's wildlife once roamed its jungles and captured the imagination of the globe. Now, as it comes under pressure, independent documentary-makers across the country are transferring to film some fascinating stories waiting to be told.
   
              

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Vatavaran, a festival of environmental and wildlife films, after being screened in New Delhi in late 2005, is currently preparing to go to venues across the country as part of a travelling exhibition.

Films for this event come in all hues, but the overall colour is green. They're coming in a small flood, on to the big screen in a diverse country that contains two precious biodiversity hotspots of the 18 scattered across the globe.

"We've received 244 entries. It's something we're immensely proud of," said P.N. Vasanti, director of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) in New Delhi. The CMS is a New Delhi-based decade-and-a-half-old think tank set up by Bhaskar Rao, which works in the field of media research, support and training.

From films of the Indian leopard under pressure to the death of snakes and stories of man-elephant conflict, independent filmmakers from across this country of a billion-plus have put together some fascinating stories.

Added Vasanti: "We feel Vatavaran is one of the most powerful platforms for advocacy (about the environment). It's not just a film festival."

"This festival is for everybody, not only for filmmakers. If you are interested in environmental issues, you can use these films for the purpose of advocacy," argues CMS's deputy director (environment) Alka Tomar.

Vatavaran has completed its third edition. It was earlier held in 2002 and 2003. In those years, it drew 100 and 150 entries respectively.

In 2004, the event was organised as a travelling festival, across six Indian cities in the south, west, east and north eastern pockets of the country - Chennai, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Kolkata, Kaziranga, Guwahati and Golaghat.

In its current edition, the festival was divided into seven categories, falling into five sections - including wildlife, natural history and conservation forests for life, environment (the largest, with 78 entries), public service films, animation and entries by students.

It is open to films that have been made in the last five years, given that environmental films come from a fairly young niche that is still to make its impact felt in India.

But organisers say they were surprised that the film festival could sustain itself in its second year, and has actually "grown vastly" the third time around.

To hunt for the best films, some two-and-a-half dozen viewers, forming part of a 'nomination jury', zeroed in on some of the best films from 244 entries that came in for consideration in the latest Vatavaran fest.

From floods in eastern India to drought in the western part of the country, the fragile cold deserts of the north to terrible chemical pollution of the south... these were among the stories to emerge from the second most populous country on the planet.

There are stories of despair, voices of concern and, above all, signs that people still care for what's happening to each other in times when selfishness seems to otherwise rule.

Environmentalism in India isn't just an environmentalist fad. Many of the films showed graphically that there's concern for what happens to the poorest of the poor, as middle-class India rushes headlong into a seductive world of over-consumption and economic growth that often leaves an invisible trail of destruction behind.

"More Men in Black", for instance, is a film about pollution on the outskirts of Delhi, as some 10,000 men on cycles go about collecting waste oil flowing down local drains, and eking out a miserable existence from the waste of others.

Nearby, chemical factories are shown polluting the local environment, even as the rush to boost exports and also feed local consumption means that it's the poor who don't benefit and yet have to pay a heavy price.

From West Bengal in eastern India comes the story of arsenic poisoning from the ground water. This is something that affects and endangers some 28 million people, and yet it hardly gets the attention it deserves. Some point to the overexploitation of water as the reason for this two-decade-old problem.

"The Parallel" is about an attempted zero-waste solution in the resort beach location of Kovalam, Kerala, in southern India, where ideas from Australia and New Zealand are helping local citizens to work on a concern that brings hope.

"River Taming Mantras" is a powerful film about the recurring floods that plague eastern India on a yearly basis. Its cameraman travels on the roof of a moving train and in helicopters visiting flooded areas to get to the story.

There are literally scores more of other films.

There are also films focussing on the use of mongoose hair for paint-brushes, the impact of uranium mining, global warming, water-based conflicts, industrial pollution in rivers, the Olive Ridley turtle, whale sharks, the horse-shoe crab, the king cobra, ecological destruction, rainwater harvesting, birds, forests, and related themes.

As some of these and other films get taken to diverse parts of India for the 'travelling festival', the new digital audio visual technologies are helping to take the message to many more people: India's environment is rich, but also fragile.