Press Release
New Delhi, January 16, 2006

Shri Vatavaran 2006 - Towards Nurturing Young Minds
Exclusive Film Festival for School Children

Center for Media Studies (CMS) in collaboration with the Shri Ram School, is organizing the Shri Vatavaran 2006 - Environment and Wildlife Film Festival from 18th to 19th January 2006 at the Shri Ram School, Gurgaon.
Taking further the mission of Vatavaran towards spreading awareness and concern for environment and wildlife, Shri Vatavaran is specially targeted at sensitizing the younger sections who would be the pillars of the society in the very near future.
Expected to draw around 2000 students from various schools in and around Gurgaon, the Festival will screen 'Best of Vatavaran films' such The Policing Langur, The Second Hand Life , Yamuna, Elephant - God or Destroyer, Kanha - Protecting A Paradise, A Shivalik Monsoon to name a few.
Shri Vatavaran 2006 does not end at the screening of the films only. It seeks to promote a platform on environmental and wildlife concerns. Towards this end, the screenings of the films will be followed by Open Forums - interactive discussions between the filmmakers, subject experts and children bringing them on a common platform, to interact and to raise issues affecting the environment and conserving nature. This will be attended by award winning filmmakers as Ms. Nutan Manmohan, Mr. Nandan Saxena, Mr. Ajay Bedi and Mr.Vijay Bedi on the one hand and on the other hand, subject experts Dr. Iqbal Malik, Mr. Vivek Menon, Mr. Ravi Agarwal, Dr. Nita Shah, and Mr. Hari Dang to name a few. This would enable the students an opportunity to interact with experts on varied issues such as Yamuna, Vultures, Elephants, Biodiversity, e-waste and Urban Wildlife issues.
A special highlight of the festival is the workshop to be conducted by Mr. Mike Pandey, internationally renowned wildlife filmmaker and conservationist and three-times recipient of Wild Screen Panda Award also known as the 'Green Oscar'. Entitled Films as a Communication Tools, the workshop will focus on wildlife and environment filmmaking. The workshop will be accompanied by the screening of two films, namely, Fragile Web and Stem Cells. Another workshop will be conducted by Mr. Prabhakar Rao on Urban Rural Linkages which will focus on biodiversity, urban landscape on rural environment.