Film festival highlighting environmental issues opens

New Delhi, Nov 3 (UNI) A film festival with a difference - one which features cinematic works shorn of all glamour and glitz associated with show business and instead focuses on the "hard ground realities" confronting people not only in India but across the world, - opened in the capital today.

The festival features documentaries highlighting environmental issues confronting people across the world - ranging from the rare cloud forests of Latin America to the impact of Global warming on the World's largest Mangrove forests of Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, organic farming in Thailand to the impact of Genetically modified Cotton in Andhra Pradesh to the anti-Cola agitation in Kerala.

Around 23 documentaries focussing on the environmental issues that challenge humanity at a collective level, threatening the very habitability of the Planet Earth as well as the struggles of communities and individuals for environmental equity will be screened at the three-day festival, which was inaugurated by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Titled 'Quotes from the Earth: making environment everybody's concern', the festival is being organised by the Toxic Links at the India International Centre. It aims to bring on a common platform voices of several individuals as well as communities striving for a clean and pollution-free environment.

In her inaugural address, the Chief Minister, lauding the holding of such a festival as a means to promote environmental concerns among the general public, announced that the films being showcased at the festival would be disseminated to a larger audience by the state Government through the use of OB vans.

She also announced on the occasion a Delhi government programme to involve school children in cultivation of wastelands in Delhi, as part of efforts to spread awareness about the environment among them.

The films being screened at the festival deal with the themes of 'Earth, Survival and Water'.

Featured in the segment 'Earth' will be films like 'Point Calimere: A Little kingdom by the Coast' by noted conservationist filmmaker Shekar Dattatri, which deals with this Ramasar site, a designation given to wetlands of international significance. 'Green Agony' by Geeta Singh was India's official entry for the Red Panda awards for this year.

The segment on 'Survival', which captures struggles of communities and individuals for Environment equity, features films on themes like hazardous waste, genetic modification gone out of control and conflict between livelihood and environment. The final segment on 'Water' deals with the vital life-giving resources that is becoming ever so scarce, causing political strife in many parts of the world.

The festival is being organised by Toxic Links in association with the India International center and supported by the Embassy of Switzerland and Swiss Agency for Developing Cooperation in India and New Delhi.

UNI AR PR RS1842