THE VIEWFINDERNEWSLETTER: ISSUE No 53, SEPTEMBER 2008 [AN HONOUR INDEED][ANOTHER VIEWFINDERS MILESTONE][POLITICS][NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK][WILDSCREEN FESTIVAL] We are delighted that Alan Root was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours this year. In Alan’s words, this is “Ordinary Bloke, Embarrassed”. John Heminway translates it in a different way: “Old Bastard, Embalmed”. Whichever definition you choose, it is a well deserved honour, for the man who won an Oscar at 21 and is still filming 50 years later. Well done Alan!
Our photo this time is a flatid bug (Ityrea Nigricinta), taken by Norbert Rottcher. Who says insects are dull? Our thanks to Norbert for this stunning image. We are celebrating our official 20th birthday – the company was officially formed in August 1988, though Jean’s first film was two years prior to that, in 1986. And at the end of August 2008, we collected our 900th film licence. This is a for a one month wildlife shoot in September/October using both IMAX and 35mm film for Sycamore Films (Terrence Malick), and the cameraman will be Mark Deeble. We feel justifiably proud to have reached this number of films, and are now aiming for the next hundred. Despite a bad start to the year, we have been consistently busy since April, and reached 50 films for the year, in August. The majority of these have been wildlife oriented, with a few charity-related crews bringing celebrities. Bono, Roger Moore and his wife, Lou Gossett Junior, and Dean Cain have all been here, and Stephen Fry is on his way soon. Two separate 3-part series on “The Great Rift” are being made simultaneously, by the BBC and ORF. On the back of Big Cat ‘Live’ is a children’s show for CBeebies. National Geographic took a gamble and came at the end of July hoping the wildebeest migration would be early. They were lucky, and managed to obtain footage of river crossings that they wanted. The coalition government is holding together, just. There is a lot of party-jumping going on, and it seems as if the main thing on the politicians’ agenda is to prepare the ground for the next election in 2012, when President Kibaki is expected to step down. Getting all the hundreds of thousands of displaced people back to where they came from has taken far longer than expected (as we predicted), but the aim is for this exercise to be completed by the end of September. Large amounts of money earmarked to resettle these people have possibly not ended up where they were intended to, and many of the displaced people have certainly not been compensated anywhere near adequately. A Commission set up to find out whether the post-electoral violence was orchestrated has produced its report, citing several politicians and church leaders as being responsible. They have not been publicly named yet, but several of those generally suspected of inciting violence have already been very vocal in denying any involvement. Another Commission was set up to find out just how flawed the election process was, and its conclusion is that it is absolutely impossible to tell who won the election. The economy is picking up slowly, with massive Government effort to revitalise the tourist sector that was so badly affected. Inflation is still running at nearly 30%, the cost of electricity has doubled, and there is a severe water shortage following the near failure of the long rains in April/May. The Nairobi NP continues to be under pressure, with housing projects springing up along the new bypass road that skirts the boundary of the park. The Kenya Wildlife Service, supported by the US, German and Dutch governments, UNEP and the Friends of Nairobi National Park (FONNAP) are doing their best to protect the integrity of the park from aggressive urbanization. A project called “The Call of the Lions” was kick-started by Alan Donovan, co-founder of African Heritage, in 2004 to raise funds, and now “African Heritage Day” has become an annual event. One of the priorities is to maintain migratory routes from the southern dispersal areas, which have become heavily populated by people. Since 2003, when eleven lions were killed in the park, FONNAP have administered a fund to compensate pastoralists whose livestock is killed by lions. The project has met with some success, and lion numbers are again increasing. The one breeding male Ujonjo and three lionesses now have seven grown up cubs who are all doing well. There has been a minor realignment of the park border at Maasai corner, and the old and little-used Cheetah Gate is being closed with effect from 1st October 2008, to be replaced by the Kongoni Gate on the Mombasa road. As always, Jean has registered for Wildscreen and will be in Bristol for the entire week of the festival. She will be staying at the Jury’s hotel, and her UK mobile number is. 07546 517 943. She is looking forward to catching up with old friends, making new ones, and also hopes to add to material she is amassing for her book on 100 years of wildlife film making in Kenya. |
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