Wildscreen

Last updated

Wildscreen
FoundedDecember 1987 (1987-12)
Founder
Type registered charity
Registration no.299450
Location
Area served
Global
Key people
Lucie Muir (Director)
Employees
4
Website www.wildscreen.org

Wildscreen is a wildlife conservation charity [1] based in Bristol, England.

Contents

The charity was founded in December 1987 [2] 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. [2] The founders included Sir Peter Scott [1] and Christopher Parsons OBE, former Head of the BBC Natural History Unit. [1]

Wildscreen Film Festival

Wildscreen Festival
Location Bristol, England
Founded1982 (1982)
AwardsWildscreen Panda Awards
Hosted byWildscreen
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]

Over the years since then the festival has significantly expanded its scale and content and the charity has also enlarged its remit, including by launching Arkive, a centralised collection of films and photographs of endangered species. [4]

Wildscreen Festival 2020

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 will also feature an Official Selection screening programme and a new award to recognise best practice in sustainable production. David Allen, multi award-winning filmmaker, was also announced as Final Jury Chair. [5]

The 2020 edition of the industry Festival takes place 19-23 October 2020 in Bristol, UK. The Official Selection screening programme will take place between 17-25 October and be open to both industry and public audiences

Panda Awards

For 2020, the Panda Awards will recognise 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 will also be a new Sustainable Production award.

Official Selection

To recognise the broad range of talent and creative storytellers, Wildscreen introduced an Official Selection competition for 2020.

Other initiatives

A physical collection of images, footage and information was started, which went online in 2003. This resource has grown to include over 16,000 species profiles and 100,000 images and videos from over 7,500 of the world's filmmakers, photographers and scientists. Arkive also contains topic pages that focus on various conservation issues, geographical regions and biological subjects. Arkive was used by over a million people around the world each month. [6]

In May 2015 Wildscreen launched their newest initiative, 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. [1]

Management

Wildscreen is a registered charity under English law, [7] governed by a board of 17 independent trustees, [1] chaired by Dick Emery OBE, former CEO of UKTV. [1]

The chief executive is Richard Edwards, appointed in March 2011 to succeed Harriet Nimmo, who stepped down in January that year after 13 years with the charity, seven in the CEO role. [8] Despite moving to South Africa, Nimmo retains a connection with the charity, in the advisory role of Wildscreen Strategic Director. [8]

For the period April 2009 – March 2010 (which was a non-festival year for the biennial Wildscreen Festival), the charity's income was declared as £1,409,722, with expenditure of £1,417,362. [1]

Wildscreen is a founder member of the Bristol Natural History Consortium, set up in 2004. [2]

Patrons

Related Research Articles

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.

<i>Natural World</i> (TV series) British TV series or programme

Natural World is a strand of British wildlife documentary programmes broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It is the longest-running documentary in its genre on British television, with nearly 500 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World programmes are typically one-off films that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the globe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature documentary</span> Documentary film genre

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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.

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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.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 WildScreen Annual Review 2010 (PDF). Wildscreen. Retrieved 11 July 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 "Wildscreen – About" . Retrieved 12 July 2011.
  3. Slade, Caroline (14 October 2012). "Wildscreen Festival, preview". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  4. "Wildscreen/ARKive, UK". Sterna. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  5. "Wildscreen evolves Panda Awards and introduces Official Selection for 2020". Wildscreen. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  6. "Wildscreen conservation charity uses colocation to preserve endangered species media library". Computer Weekly. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  7. "Wildscreen, registered charity no. 299450". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  8. 1 2 "Wildscreen – News – Press releases". Wildscreen. 7 March 2011. Retrieved 12 July 2011.