Wednesday, May 23, 2012 11:10 AM IST
Wild action on screen
Last Updated : 11 Dec 2011 12:11:28 PM IST
Allka Tomar (Photograph by Ravi Choudhary).
With the first lot of hiccups taken care of, Alka Tomar, founder-director of CMS Vatavaran International Environment and Wildlife Film Festival, marched towards her pursuits of generating awareness regarding climate change, biodiversity and other environmental concerns. Something a lot of people dared to do but few succeeded.“In 2000, environment was not high on anyone’s agenda — neither the media nor the corporates. Needless to say, there was lack of knowledge regarding how it was intrinsically linked with our future wellness and economic progress. Thus, my quest became to explore the issue,” she says.With 114 films, 15 countries, 56 speakers and 400 delegates, Tomar is one happy lady. What made her happier was the fact that film writers like Shyam Benegal, Prakesh Jha and Basu Chatterjee were part of the grand festival — the only one on environment and wildlife in the country.“We are not just a film festival showing films, we involve experts to talk about the issues and generate a dialogue. This year too we had open forums and discussions on conservation, forests, geography, biodiversity, wildlife, nature and climate change,” she says.Started in 2002, the festival has celebrated a decade of excellence in films on the subject, with its twin-track approach of organising competitive and travelling film festivals and forum successfully creating a strong network of Indian and international filmmakers, researchers, environmentalists, journalists, students and nature lovers. During the last 10 years, five competitive and four travelling editions of CMS Vatavaran have been organised in 20 more Indian cities. “The preparations start a year in advance when the call for entries are made and culminates only when the last guest attending the festival is bid farewell,” she says.And not only is the festival for mature sensibilities, it also opens its gates to children in more than a spectacular way. “Children need to be initiated into environmental education at a young age, as it is imperative they understand that humans and the environment need to be treated alike — with love, care, compassion and respect — because their lifecycles are interlinked. It will allow children to understand through brilliant moving images and animation, how each one of us can conserve natural resources,” she says.Keeping this in mind, a separate session for not just school kids but also their teachers and parents was organised wherein 50 schools, 200 teachers and 3,000 students participated, giving them some action-packed wild drama live on the big screen.
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