Film Festival – Conservation Optimism Summit 2019

Good Natured: A Conservation Optimism Short Film Festival

We are very excited to announce that we will be running a film festival on Monday 2^nd of September at 8 pm in the amazing Oxford University Natural History Museum as part of the Conservation Optimism Summit! If you can’t attend the summit but would be keen to come to the film festival you can get your free ticket here.

The evening will kick off with a panel discussion between our judges around the importance of film making to raise awareness of conservation issues. We will then screen a diversity of short movies belonging to the following categories:

Super Shorts
People & Nature: Communities, Heroes & Wellbeing
Conservation Works: Learning from Success & Failure
Animation
Student film

The Good Natured: A Conservation Optimism Film Festival team is currently reviewing the short films that were submitted.

The Film Festival Judges:

Lucie Muir

Growing up in Jersey in the Channel Islands, round the corner from Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, embedded a passion for nature from an early age. Graduating with a BSc Zoology and an MSc in Wildlife Conservation Management from Newcastle University, Lucie joined the conservation charity Wildscreen in 2005.

Starting as a photo and film researcher on the Arkive project, she went on to develop Wildscreen’s educational outputs, using media to inspire the next generation of conservationists. In 2014, she led the evolution of the Wildscreen Exchange, providing over 250 conservation organisations globally with access to imagery and empowering them to tell their own stories and supporting their frontline campaigns.

Appointed Wildscreen Director in 2015, as well as overseeing the future strategy and day to day running of the charity, Lucie leads on the Wildscreen Festival – the biggest global gathering of filmmakers, photographers and conservation organisations. She firmly believes in the power of storytelling to inspire everyone to experience and protect our natural world.

Prasenjeet Yadav

Prasenjeet Yadav is a molecular ecologist turned photographer and a National Geographic Explorer. Prasenjeet holds a masters degree in molecular biology and has pursued research in molecular ecology for several years at National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India.

Early in his scientific career, he realized that his real passion lay in storytelling. He now combines his experience in research with his photography skills to popularize ecological and conservation sciences in the wider society. Prasenjeet is one of the very few photographers who integrates science deeply into his photo stories.

He chooses ignored subjects, landscapes, and species and find ways to develop engaging and accessible photos. For every story, he collaborates with researchers, managers, policymakers as well as conservationists. Along with the larger stories, he also produces stories that are directed at specific audiences who have the power to create lasting change.

Peter Venn

Peter Venn is the Programme lead for the University of the West of England’s MA in Wildlife Filmmaking. Now in its seventh year, UWE’s flagship, multi award-winning, industry-focused Masters Course is run in academic partnership with the BBC’s world renowned Natural History Unit. Graduates from the MA are now working globally across the natural history production industry. Peter joined the Programme the production industry as an series and latterly executive producer, where he specialised in working with junior teams and new production companies to deliver commissions for broadcasters including; BBC, C4, Nat geo, Discovery, NDR, Arte and NHK. He is recently appointed Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and continues to work on broadcast productions.

The Film Festival panel will be chaired by:

Sofia Castelló y Tickell

Sofia is the lead on the Good Natured short film festival and focuses on creative communications for Conservation Optimism. She is a PhD student in Zoology studying human-made reefs at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science at the University of Oxford.

Previously, she attained an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at the University of Oxford, and an AB in Biology and Photojournalism at Brown University, where she was an AT&T New Media Fellow and focused on the history and ethics of photojournalism.

Her stop motion films about marine life have been published by The New York Times and won awards including “Best Short” at the SCINEMA International Science Film Festival and “Best Scientific Message” at the Beneath the Waves Film Festival.

The mentors:

Our winners will get the incredible opportunity to be mentored by the following experts:

Robin Moore – Mentor for the Conservation Works: Learning from Success & Failure category

Robin Moore is Senior Director of Digital Content with Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC) and a Senior Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Robin got his PhD in biodiversity conservation from the University of Kent before swapping calipers for camera and using photography and visual storytelling for conservation.

In 2010 Robin spearheaded the innovative ‘Search for Lost Frogs’ which dispatched teams to find some of the world’s missing amphibians. The campaign resulted in 15 rediscoveries, culminated in the critically acclaimed ‘In Search of Lost Frogs’, and formed the inspiration for GWC’s successful ‘Search for Lost Species’.

Robin uses visual storytelling to challenge prevailing narratives and offer new and hopeful ones. In Jamaica he helped local partners overturn the government’s decision to develop the country’s largest protected area and in Bolivia his team partnered with Match.com to help save the world’s loneliest frog.

Lucie Muir – Mentor for the Student category

Prasenjeet Yadav – Mentor for the People & Nature: Communities, Heroes & Wellbeing category

Arlo Brady and Zad Rogers – Mentors for the Super Shorts category

Arlo is Chief Executive of The Brewery. With more than 20 years global consultancy experience, Arlo has had the privilege of working with some of the world’s most influential organisations and their leaders – entrepreneurs, business leaders and philanthropists. Arlo’s background is eclectic; he started out as a geologist before exploring sustainability consultancy and dipping his toes into life as a business school academic at Cambridge with a specialism in corporate reputation – and it was there that he wrote his first book The Sustainability Effect.

Zad Rogers is the Founding Director of Atomized Studios which is part of Freuds Communications. Atomized produces impactful films for brands and broadcasters for distribution across web and TV, but now with the support of the UK’s leading communications agency. In partnership with freuds Zad’s client group includes UBS, EY, Public Health England, KFC, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Compare The Market and Lexus, and he also works with the worlds leading broadcasters and publishers including the BBC, Channel 4 and Nat Geo.

Jilli Rose – Mentor for the Animation category

After brief careers as a croupier, archaeologist and printing press assistant, Jilli taught herself to animate and has been gleefully making things move ever since. From her studio in Castlemaine, Australia, she works collaboratively with artists, filmmakers, scientists, directors and curators around the world, tailor-making work that fits snugly within their productions and museums.

She has been creating graphics since 1996 on hugely different projects, from designing game characters to reconstructing ancient creatures and environments based on their fossil evidence, building virtual models based on nanotechnology designers’ blueprints, envisioning the past and the future for documentary filmmakers, creating title sequences, illustrating scientific concepts from the planetary to the molecular level and mixing animations live to accompany musicians and theatre. Her three short films have participated collectively in over 150 film festivals and won numerous awards.