July 20, 2004


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CSE film on harvesting rain wins ‘Green Oscars’ nomination

New Delhi: Rainwater Harvesting, a 90-second public services advertisement produced by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi has been nominated by the Wildscreen 2004 Panda Awards for its Campaign Award category. The United Kingdom’s Wildscreen Awards, dubbed the ‘Green Oscars’, is among the most prestigious in wildlife and environmental filmmaking.

Rainwater Harvesting, which won the best documentary prize at the Vatavaran 2003 film festival in New Delhi, has been directed by noted film star Nandita Das. Exquisitely crafted, the advertisement promotes rainwater harvesting by focusing on the concept of catching rain where it falls in a neighbourhood. Using a medley of emotions – ranging from wonder to comic and even the absurd – it subtly weaves in the idea that rainwater harvesting is a community effort. The film was shot over just two days in Kolkata.

More than 400 entries from 43 nations were received for this year’s Wildscreen Awards. The Campaign Award category is a new entry in the Awards. Three films, besides Rainwater Harvesting, were nominated in this category – two from the US and one from the UK. Each production, according to the organisers, was "judged on its ability to identify and target its audience, give a clear message and a direct action that the viewer could take". The nominations will be considered for the awards in October, just before the festival.

Rainwater Harvesting is part of a unique collection of films and photographs that is housed in CSE’s Audio Visual Resource Centre (AVRC). With more than 1,00,000 photographs and slides and over 600 documentaries on environment and sustainable development in its collection, the AVRC is one of the finest repositories of its kind in India. The Centre also specialises in preparing customised slide shows, photo exhibitions and archived footages for its clients, and offers consultancy and training for management of similar centres across India.


For more details, please write to Kiran or Ashwini at: kiran@cseindia.org and ashwini@cseindia.org.
Contact: +91 (011) 29955124/125 (ext. 213)