During the recent Environment and Wildlife Film Festival - Vatatvaran 2003 - held in New Delhi on the 18th, 19th and 20th November - there was good news for Mumbai based NGO Reef Watch. This year the theme at the festival was “Water for Life” and the festival had 154 entries of which 70 films were nominated for competition.
Reef Watch Marine Conservation entered the film “Troubled Waters”, an 18 minute underwater documentary on the issue of the rise in sea surface temperatures due to global warming and its effect on the coral reefs off the Lakshadweep coast, the effects of the El-Nino current and its devastation in 1998 and the slow regeneration of the coral reefs since then.
The film was awarded “Best Film of the Festival” for the uniqueness of its subject matter, its technical excellence and its sheer visual brilliance. ‘Troubled Waterconceptualizedtualised and directed and shot entirely by Sumer Verma, a dive instructor and a
working member of Reef Watch Marine Conservation. The film exists in English and Malayalam versions and will soon have a Hindi version too. The film was produced by
Mitali Kakar, Director of Reef Watch Marine Conservation.
The jury at the festival competition consisted of eminent persons from the fields of environment conservation and film making and also included people from government offices, including Mr Adoor Gopal Krishnan, Mr Ajay S. Mehta, Dr Mrs Nanditha Krishna, Mr Bittu Sahgal, Mr. M.C. Mehta, Prof. P.S. Ramakrishnan, Ms. Prerna Bindra, Mr. Rajiv Mehrotra and Ms. Usha Rai.
The standard of films showcased this year was very high and the festival had films made by other eminent documentary film makers like Mike Pandey, Niret and Nikhil Alva, the Bedi Brothers, Sanjay Duttari, etc.
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