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| People enjoy the screening of Global Dimming as part of the film festival in Guwahati on Thursday. Picture by Eastern Projections |
Guwahati, Feb 13 : They had never given it a thought, believing all was well with Mother Earth, till they saw Global Dimming.
“I am shocked... that is all I can say,” Natasha, a Class IX student of a city school, said after watching the documentary that was screened as part of the Wildscreen Film festival which began here today.
The documentary directed by Duncan Copp and produced by Dox Productions shows that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface has been gradually declining.
Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution. Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming) but also tiny airborne particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants.
Environmental experts who attended the festival said spreading information through films had more impact than organising awareness programmes.
“A five-minute film is stronger than awareness programmes as it can reach out to a larger audience,” environmentalist Anwaruddin Choudhury said while delivering the keynote address at the festival in Shilpgram.
The aim of the two-day festival is to encourage excellence in producing films on natural world, so as to increase global viewing and understanding of nature and awareness on the urgent need to conserve it.
Citing examples of threats to bio-diversity in the region, Choudhury said wildlife films needed to address many issues, including deforestation and man-elephant conflict.
Inaugurating the festival, former vice-chancellor of Dibrugarh University Kulendu Pathak said poverty was the biggest issue that needed to be tackled. “There needs to be a different strategy for development altogether,” he added.
Television producer Dominic Weston, who has been a key figure in Wildscreen over the last four festivals, said images and sounds made any topic interesting, more so when it concerned environment.
“The presence of so many children is encouraging,” he said, adding that they were keen to have a dialogue with filmmakers from India.
Masterclasses for filmmakers and students are being held at the festival. These will focus on capacity development among environmental filmmakers in the country.
Climate change is a pressing concern, but how many want to watch a film on it? To answer this question, filmmaker Joe Smith will hold a masterclass tomorrow on Climate Change on Screen: The Creative Challenge. The state of affairs of environmental filmmaking will also be discussed. Filmmaker Maulee Senapati will hold another masterclass on Environmental Film Making in Northeast India: Opportunities and Challenges.