Cyril Christo | |
---|---|
Born | May 11, 1960 |
Education | Columbia University |
Occupation(s) | Writer, producer, poet, filmmaker, animal rights activist |
Known for | A Stitch for Time |
Notable work | Lords of the Earth: The Entwined Destiny of Wildlife and Humanity |
Spouse | Marie Wilkinson |
Children | Lysander Christo |
Parent | Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (aka Christo and Jeanne-Claude) |
Cyril Christo (born 11 May 1960, Paris, France) is a writer, poet, photographer, filmmaker and animal rights activist residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [1] He has created or co-created a number of poetry and photography books that include Lost Africa: The Eyes of Origin, Walking Thunder: In the Footsteps of the African Elephant, and In Predatory Light: In Search of Lions, Tigers and Polar Bears. [2]
He is the son of Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who are known as the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Since 1997 he frequently works on films and books with his wife, Marie Wilkinson, and occasionally too with his son Lysander. [3] The three of them worked with Jane Goodall on the book Lords of the Earth: The Entwined Destiny of Wildlife and Humanity. [4] Christo and Wilkinson's first book of black and white photography, Lost Africa: The Eyes of Origin, published by Assouline Publishing in 2005, focused on ecological and man-made troubles that face tribal communities in the Horn of Africa. Photographs from that project were also published. [5]
Christo was born in France and has lived in the United States since the age of four, when his family moved there in 1964. [6] Christo studied at Cornell University and graduated from Columbia University in 1982. [7] [8]
Together with his wife Mary Wilkinson [9] he has been engaged since 1996 in wildlife documentary projects [10] [11] and has published several photography books about Africa that call attention to endangered animals such as elephants, leopards, giraffes, and lions. [12] as well as appeals for more stricter measures to enforce the protection of whales and polar bears.
Their son Lysander (born 22 September 2005) [13] [14] has participated in their projects in East Africa from an early age. [15] [16] In 2007 they released a short documentary film titled Lysander's Song about the interactions between humans and elephants. [17] [18]
Cyril Christo [19] is the co-producer of A Stitch for Time: The Boise Peace Quilt Project, [20] which was nominated in 1998 for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film documents activities of a group of quilt makers in Boise, Idaho, who received international attention for promoting peace by sending a quilt in 1981 [21] to the Soviet Union as well as making the National Peace Quilt in 1986 for display in the United States Senate and later deposit at the Smithsonian Institution. [22] [23] [24] [25]
The film Walking Thunder: Ode to the African Elephant about Lysander's encounter with elephants in East Africa [26] was screened at the 2019 Taos Environmental Film Festival. [27]
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist.
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American adventure film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. It was the second feature film based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, a previous adaptation having been released by RKO Pictures in 1940. Directed by Ken Annakin and shot in Tobago and Pinewood Studios outside London, it was the first widescreen Walt Disney Pictures film shot with Panavision lenses; when shooting in widescreen, Disney had almost always used a matted wide screen or filmed in CinemaScope.
Peter Hill Beard was an American artist, photographer, diarist, and writer who lived and worked in New York City, Montauk and Kenya. His photographs of Africa, African animals and the journals that often integrated his photographs, have been widely shown and published since the 1960s.
Karl Ammann is a Swiss conservationist, wildlife photographer, author and documentary film producer. He initiated a campaign focusing on the African bush meat trade, which gained worldwide attention. As a conservation activist, he has specialized in investigative journalism involving undercover exposés dealing with the illegal wildlife trade. In the process, he has exposed NGOs and international conventions for their lack of effectiveness and the promotion of feel-good tales.
Gregory C. Carr is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. His main philanthropic venture is the restoration of Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, which has been ravaged by Mozambican Civil War and environmental destruction. He has pledged more than $100 million over 35 years to restore and protect the park's biodiversity, and to assist communities living adjacent to the park with health care, education and agriculture in a public-private partnership with the government of Mozambique.
Conservation in Uganda is the protection and sustainable use of the country's rich natural resources. It became a significant movement during the British colonial period in the early 20th century and continues to play a major role in Uganda's political economy, as it underpins the tourism industry which accounts for 23.5% of the country's exports.
Earth is a 2007 nature wildlife documentary film which depicts the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film begins in the Arctic in January of one year and moves southward, concluding in Antarctica in the December of the same year. Along the way, it features the journeys made by three particular species—the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale—to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. A companion piece and a sequel to the 2006 BBC/Discovery/NHK/CBC television series Planet Earth, the film uses many of the same sequences, though most are edited differently, and features previously unseen footage not seen on TV.
Disneynature is an independent film studio that specializes in the production of nature documentary films for Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The production company was founded on April 21, 2008, and is headquartered in Paris, France.
Nick Brandt is an English photographer. Nick Brandt's photographs focus on the impact of environmental destruction and climate breakdown, for both some of the most vulnerable people across the planet and for the animal and natural world.
Laurence Laverty is an American character actor. His film roles include playing Larry Davies in The Hamiltons (2006), as well as appearances in Dead Tone (2007) and in Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003). Laverty made television guest appearances in Judging Amy, The Practice, Breaking Vegas, Nash Bridges, and MADtv. His performance on The Tonight Show led to a number of appearances on daytime soap operas including Days of Our Lives, Passions, Port Charles, and All My Children.
Damien Mander is an anti-poaching activist and the founder of Akashinga. He is a former Australian Royal Navy Clearance Diver and Special Operations military sniper. He is also a director of the Conservation Guardians. In 2019, he received the Winsome Constance Kindness Trust Gold Medal.
Naresh Bedi is an Indian filmmaker, the eldest of the Bedi Brothers and a member of the second generation of three generations of Wildlife photographers and filmmakers. He is the first Asian to receive a Wildscreen Panda Award and the first Indian to receive a wildlife film nomination for the British Academy Film Awards. He was honoured by the Government of India in 2015 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.
Kalyan Varma is a Emmy nominated wildlife filmmaker, photographer and conservationist. based in India. Over the last 20 years, he has been documenting the beauty of nature as well as the plight of environment in India.
Pete Oxford is a British-born conservation photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa, after living in Quito, Ecuador for several years. Originally trained as a marine biologist, he and his wife, South African-born Reneé Bish, now work as a professional photographic team focusing primarily on wildlife and indigenous cultures.
Will Burrard-Lucas, is a British wildlife photographer and entrepreneur. He is known for developing devices, such as BeetleCam and camera traps, which enable him to capture close-up photographs of wildlife.
Media diving is underwater diving in support of the media industries, including the practice of underwater photography and underwater cinematography outside of normal recreational interests. Media diving is often carried out in support of television documentaries, such as the BBC series Planet Earth or movies, with feature films such as Titanic and The Perfect Storm featuring underwater photography or footage. Media divers are normally highly skilled camera operators who use diving as a method to reach their workplace, although some underwater photographers start as recreational divers and move on to make a living from their hobby.
The Elephant Queen is a 2018 documentary film directed by Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble, and narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It tells the journey of a family of elephants in the African savannah when they are forced to leave their waterhole. The film was produced by Lucinda Englehart under the banner of Deeble & Stone.
Elephant is a 2020 American nature documentary film about elephants directed by Mark Linfield and Vanessa Berlowitz and narrated by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. It is the fifteenth nature documentary to be released under the Disneynature label. The film was released alongside Dolphin Reef as a Disney+ exclusive on April 3, 2020.
Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83 was a 1983 environmental artwork in which artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude surrounded an island archipelago in Miami with pink fabric.
Aishwarya Sridhar is an Indian wildlife photographer, wildlife presenter, and documentary filmmaker residing in Navi Mumbai. She is the youngest girl to have won the Sanctuary Asia- Young Naturalist Award and the International Camera Fair. Award. In 2020, Aishwarya became the first Indian woman to win Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. She is also a member of the State Wetland Identification Committee appointed by the Bombay High Court. Her works have been featured in BBC Wildlife, The Guardian, Sanctuary Asia, Saevus, Hindustan Times, Mumbai Mirror, Digital Camera, Mathrubhumi and Mongabay.