Spanish, Aus movies bag eco film awards
Spanish filmmakers walked away with two of the top three awards and an Australian took the third in the fifth edition of the Babul Eco Film Festival that concluded at Sarathi Studios here on Sunday.
The weekend festival was jointly collaborated by Babul Films Society, an NGO, Sarathi Studios and Hyderabad Film Club. The 80 films that were screened across genres were all dedicated to environment and biodiversity.
In keeping with the festival’s theme, Telugu actor Tanikella Bharani inaugurated the event by watering a plant in a pot recycled from a toilet flush made by one of the NGO’s volunteers.
“Even a great poet like Kalidasa portrayed Shakuntala as an ecofriendly lover of biodiversity. People should use cinema and social media as tools to spread awareness about the environment, biodiversity and sustainability, which are all useful to every living being” he said.
Two of his films ‘Blue Cross’ and ‘The Last Farmer’ were screened at the inaugural.
The top three award winning films were ‘Eden’ directed by Spaniard Eva Maria Urbano Mora, ‘Painting by numbers’ directed by Radheya Jegatheva from Australia and Finite Soil that was directed by Isidro Jimenez Gomez from Spain.After conferring the awards, jury chairman P. Raghuveer, former principal chief conservator of forests, observed, “Indians are more aware about cinema and cricket. It is high time they develop an ecofriendly mindset. The Stockholm National Park has a special area for blue jays (Palapitta in Telugu). I am happy that Babul Films Society has been organizing events like this to encourage creative people to exhibit their work”.
Actor-environmentalist and festival director, Gangadhar Pandey, said, “Film festivals play a vital role in promoting eco-sensitiveness. This is only possible with the support of eco-lovers. BEFF and Hyderabad Film Club have been constantly backing us as we go about spreading environmental awareness”.
A film ‘Land of the Spoon-Billed Sandpiper’, lasting 82 minutes, and directed by Russian documentary filmmaker Iuliia Darkova, explains why this particular bird can be the key to understanding why some species are on the verge of extinction and how biodiversity can be preserved.
Six one-minute films — ‘Broken Dreams’, ‘Old Habits are Hard to Break’, ‘We Have to Rethink Everything’, ‘Searching’, ‘One Man’s Trash’ and ‘Time is Running Out’ — carried their own messages.
Eminent director Relangi Narasimha Rao, actress Poojitha Jonnalagadda, K.V. Rao from Sarathi Studios and Prakash Reddy of Hyderabad Film Club graced the inaugural ceremony.