TVE Asia Pacific joins Film-makers for Conservation

TVE Asia Pacific recently became a member of Film-makers for Conservation (FFC).

FFC is the global conservation organisation for the film and television industry. Its mission is ‘to promote global conservation through the making, broadcasting and distributing of films, and to help conservation organisations and filmmakers worldwide to make more, better-informed, and effective conservation films.’

The networking organisation was set up a few years ago by an international group of environment, wildlife and natural history film-makers to ‘use the power of film and media to conserve our Natural world’.

FFC is implementing a range of activities for better networking and professional development among the closely-knit film-making community. It also seeks to inspire, educate and motivate new audiences ‘to actively participate and support conservation’.

“We have known and worked with many FFC members for the past few years,” says Nalaka Gunawardene, Director and CEO of TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP). “Becoming a formal member of FFC enables us to consolidate these links.”

“We are particularly interested in FFC’s focus on using environment and natural history films for conservation education,” says Manori Wijesekera, TVEAP’s Regional Programme Manager. “This resonates with our own work, where we use moving images to move people on issues of sustainable development.”

TVEAP played an active role in Wildlife Asia international film festival held in Singapore from 13 to 17 March 2007. Organised by FFC founder member and former Asia representative Chris Dickinson, the festival was attended by several dozen industry professionals, broadcasters, film-makers, academics, environment & development NGO leaders and students from over 15 countries including Asia, Europe and North America.

FFC had a major presence at the festival, with members, as well as current and former board members chairing panels or making presentations.

Click here for full programme of Wildlife Asia.

In addition to an open meeting, FFC conducted two seminars: ‘Educational Outreach Initiatives’ and ‘What Makes a Difference and Why’.

The seminar on Educational Outreach Initiatives was chaired by Joe Yaggi of Jungle Run Productions, Indonesia, who is co-president of FFC. It looked at the range of options available for non-broadcast distribution of films.

Manori Wijesekera of TVEAP was a panelist at this seminar, along with Julien Colomer from Wild Aid's Kouprey Express project, Louis Ng, the Director of ACRES (a Singaporean wildlife protection NGO), Steve Griffiths, a multi-media consultant and independent filmmaker for ADB and Johanna Son, Director of Inter Press Service Asia Pacific (IPS-AP).

The forum included opening remarks by the head of the Korean Green Film Festival, Mr. Yul Choi.

“Our thought was to give audience members a sense of what can be done with films outside broadcast TV and the presentations were very impressive,” says Joe Yaggi.