Last year, Friends of the Environment brought the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival to The Bahamas for the first time. The festival is a natural extension of FRIENDS’ work to inspire people to act as environmental stewards. Using the Wild and Scenic Film Festival as inspiration, FRIENDS and local film production company, Loggerhead Productions, hosted a competition for Abaco’s high school students. After attending the film festival and presentations by FRIENDS at their schools, students submitted proposals for their own film and an independent panel of judges chose the best one.
Nearly twenty proposals were submitted with topics ranging from the health of Abaco’s reefs to the impact of litter on our ecosystems. The winning student, James Boyce, a tenth grader from Forest Heights Academy in Marsh Harbour, won the competition with a proposal to shed light on the recent turtle ban in The Bahamas. The production took slightly longer than expected in order to capture the nesting period of the females. The wait was well worth it as some of the footage does exactly what James wanted it to do, show the world how magnificent and fragile these creatures are.
The short film What’s so Great About Turtles? can be viewed online at www.conchsaladtv.com and will be shown at next year’s Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival. The festival dates and venues are set for:
• Marsh Harbour—Friday January 6, 2012, New Vision Ministries, with a special separate film program shown for kids at the same time as the adult program.
• Hope Town—Saturday, January 28, 2012, Hope Town Harbour Lodge.
For more information on Friends of the Environment, visit www.friendsoftheenvironment.org or telephone (242) 367-2721.
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