Founded | December 1987 |
---|---|
Founder | |
Type | Registered charity |
Registration no. | 299450 |
Location |
|
Area served | Global |
Key people | Lucie Muir (Director) |
Website | https://wildscreen.org/ |
Wildscreen is a wildlife conservation charity based in Bristol, England. [1]
The charity was founded in December 1987 [1] from a trust which had operated since 1982, with the initial aim of encouraging and applauding excellence in the production of natural history films and television. [1] The founders included Sir Peter Scott [2] and Christopher Parsons OBE, former Head of the BBC Natural History Unit. [2]
Location | Bristol, England |
---|---|
Founded | 1982 |
Awards | Wildscreen Panda Awards Wildscreen Official Selection |
Hosted by | Wildscreen |
Website | https://wildscreen.org/festival |
The Wildscreen Festival is the world's leading international festival about nature films. It is held biennially in October in Bristol, England.
The festival began in 1982. In 1994, it merged with a biennial wildlife symposium, previously held in the neighbouring city of Bath. At Wildscreen Festival wildlife filmmakers and broadcasters from different parts of the world met to view the latest productions, discuss issues of mutual interest, exchange ideas and compete for the Panda Awards. [3] [4]
Over the years since then the festival has significantly expanded its scale and content and the charity has also enlarged its remit, including the launch of international festivals, Science is Storytelling, [5] WildPhotos, [6] and Wildscreen ARK (Formerly Arkive). [7] [8] [9]
The most recent festival took place on 14–18 October 2024. [10] In its 42nd year, the fully hybrid event celebrated and advanced natural world storytelling. [11] [12]
The festival included a range of programmed events, including, Masterclasses, Discussion Panels, Headline speakers, Workshops, Kit Show, Networking, Screenings. Along with Wildpitch, [13] Official Selection, [14] and the Panda Awards. [15] [12] [16] [17]
The Panda Awards included two new categories; [18] the Children's Award sponsored by Wildscreen ARK, an online nature inspiration hub for young people. [19] Additionally a there was a Special Recognition Award for Field Craft, which highlighted the essential role of local in-country field crew within the natural history genre. [19]
For the Official Selection included three special awards, the Programmer Prize, Audience Prize and Sustainable Merit. [14]
Wildscreen Festival Nairobi was the their first outside-of-UK festival, in Nairobi, Africa. [20] The two-day event in July 2023 brought talent and storytellers from around the world to Kenya's capital, as part of the organisation's mission to help create a more inclusive industry. [11]
Continuing from the success of Wildscreen Festival Nairobi 2023, the second instalment of Wildscreens presence in Africa culminated in Wildscreen Festival Tanzania, held in Arusha June 2024. [21] [22] The festival programme included workshops, masterclasses, networking, and WildPitch Tanzania. [21]
In preparation for the 2020 edition of the festival, Wildscreen announced the launch of the newly revamped Panda Awards, the highest honour in the global wildlife and environmental film industry. The 2020 festival also featured Official Selection screenings and a new award to recognise best practice in sustainable production. David Allen, multi award-winning filmmaker, was also announced as Final Jury Chair. [23]
For 2020, the Panda Awards recognised talent in the following categories; Cinematography, Editing, Emerging Talent (in both film and photography), Music, Photo Story, Producer/Director, Production Team, Scripted Narrative, Series and Sound. There was also a new Sustainable Production award.
To recognise the broad range of talent and creative storytellers, Wildscreen introduced an Official Selection competition for 2020. [23]
Taking place in October 2024, WildPhotos was a one-day hybrid event held in Bristol, [24] celebrating some of the world's best wildlife photographers. [6] [25] Wildscreen partnered with the Natural History Museum, London's Wildlife Photographer of the Year to host this photography symposium. [26]
Taking place in Bristol, the new one day annual event launched in March 2024. [27] The day included a series of discussion panels, Q&A's, talks and networking, and brought together a diverse community of scientists and storytellers. [5]
Wildscreen ARK (https://wildscreenark.org/) is the newest version of ARKive, a project created by Christopher Parsons, a founding member of the BBC Natural History Unit and the Wildscreen charity. [28] [29] Arkive was used by over a million people around the world each month. [30] ARKive was retired in 2019. [8]
The new nature education platform, Wildscreen ARK, was launched in February 2024. [31] It has been designed to connect and engage teenagers with nature and the natural world, utilizing UK nature video and photo content alongside educational resources. [32] [33] During the first year of the project, a local Youth Film and Photography Competition was launched for young people from the West of England region, [34] in collaboration with the West of England Combined Authority. [35]
In May 2015 Wildscreen launched Wildscreen Exchange. This conservation initiative provides conservation organisations with access to images, videos and expertise. Wildscreen Exchange contains over 28,000 images and many hours of video that are being used all over the world for campaigns, education resources, community outreach, fundraising and online. [2]
Wildscreen is a registered charity under English law, [36] governed by a board of 10 independent trustees, [37] chaired by Laura Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Icon Films. [38] The chief executive is Lucie Muir, appointed in 2015. [39]
Wildscreen is a founder member of the Bristol Natural History Consortium, set up in 2004. [1]
The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, and has a long association with David Attenborough's authored documentaries, starting with 1979's Life on Earth.
Natural World was a strand of British wildlife documentary series broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It was the longest-running documentary series in its genre on British television, with nearly 500 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World episodes were typically films that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the globe.
ARKive was a global initiative with the mission of "promoting the conservation of the world's threatened species, through the power of wildlife imagery", which it did by locating and gathering films, photographs and audio recordings of the world's species into a centralised digital archive. Its priority was the completion of audio-visual profiles for the c. 17,000 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Neil Nightingale is a British freelance wildlife filmmaker, executive producer and creative consultant with over 35 years experience at the BBC. From 2009 to 2018 he was the creative director of BBC Earth, BBC Worldwide's global brand for all BBC nature and science content.
Ami Vitale is an American photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, educator and speaker. In 2018, she published a photo book titled Panda Love which captures pandas within captivity and being released into the wild.
Krupakar and Senani are wildlife photographers from Karnataka, India. They have produced the wildlife film Wild Dog Diaries for National Geographic Channel. For this documentary they won the following awards:
James Honeyborne is the creative director of Freeborne Media, he previously worked as an executive producer at the BBC Natural History Unit where he oversaw some 35 films, working with multiple co-producers around the world. His projects include the Emmy Award and BAFTA-winning series Blue Planet II, the Emmy Award-nominated series Wild New Zealand with National Geographic, and the BAFTA-winning BBC1 series Big Blue Live with PBS.
Christopher Eugene Parsons OBE was an English wildlife film-maker and the executive producer of David Attenborough's Life on Earth nature documentary. As a founding member and a former Head of the BBC Natural History Unit, he worked on many of its early productions and published a history of its first 25 years in 1982. Besides television, he was also passionate about projects which helped to bring an understanding of the natural world to a wider audience, notably the Wildscreen Festival and ARKive.
David Nicholas Poore is a British independent musician, who has composed and produced music for over 200 films by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Disney, PBS, National Geographic, RTÉ and other broadcasters.
Kate Brooks is an American photojournalist who has covered the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since September 11, 2001.
Sandesh Kadur is an Indian wildlife film producer and conservation photographer known for his contributions to BBC Planet Earth II. In 2024, he was appointed to the National Geographic Society board of trustees considering his contribution to explorers and groundbreaking wildlife documentary films. Sandesh's films have been shown on various television networks including National Geographic Channel, BBC, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
Bahar Dutt is an Indian television journalist and environmental editor and columnist for CNN-IBN.
Vijay Bedi is the third generation of wildlife film maker and photographer in a family that has a long history of expertise in this highly specialized field.
Sand Wars is a documentary by director Denis Delestrac and produced by Rappi Productions, La Compagnie des Taxi-Brousse, InfomAction, Arte France, with the support of The Santa Aguila Foundation.
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.
The Serengeti Rules is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Nicolas Brown, and based on the book by Sean B. Carroll. The film explores the discoveries of five pioneering scientists—Tony Sinclair, Mary E. Power, Bob Paine, John Terborgh, and Jim Estes—whose decades of research laid the groundwork for modern ecology and offer hope that environmentalists today may be able to “upgrade” damaged ecosystems by understanding the rules that govern them.
Gillian Burke is a natural history television programme presenter, producer and voiceover artist. She is best known for co-presenting BBC nature series Springwatch and its spin-offs since 2017.
The Photo Ark is a National Geographic project, led by photographer Joel Sartore, with the goal of photographing all species living in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries around the globe in order to inspire action to save wildlife.
Gunjan Menon is an Indian wildlife film director, camerawoman, and National Geographic Explorer.
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