Five winning films of the sixth annual Central American and Caribbean Environmental Film Contest will be announced in an awards ceremony on World Environment Day Monday.
The ceremony, scheduled for 6 p.m. at the National Museum in San José, will mark the official inauguration of the 10th annual environment festival, “Fertile Mother, Our Earth,” according to Kristhel García, from the conservation association Terra Nostra, which organizes the event.
A jury of five audiovisual and environment experts will select the winners from a pool of 16 Nicaraguan and Costa Rican videos presented in free public showings this week at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports’ Cinema Center in San José, said a statement from the marine conservation organization MarViva.
Winners will be awarded an endangered stork statuette in the categories of Best Environmental Video and Best Journalistic Video, while a hammer shark statuette will go to the Best Marine Video.
All three winners will receive ¢100,000 (approximately $200). A “Jury’s Choice” and “People’s Choice” award will also be announced.
García said the “Fertile Mother, Our Earth,” festival, which began unofficially this week with the film contest, will extend throughout the month of June.
Free or nearly free activities, such as photo and cartoon exhibitions by international artists, are planned, as well as a Water Festival 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday at the National Museum with activities for children, including a painting contest, and information booths by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and the National Water and Sewer Institute (AyA).
To celebrate World Oceans Day June 8, a fusion piano concert-film viewing of “Submarine Trance,” one of the films participating in the contest, is scheduled at 7 p.m. at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center in Barrio Dent, east of San José.
Participating films in the contest, which include works titled “The Lost Treasure of the Caribbean” and “Our Daily Poison,” feature topics ranging from mining exploitation to shark finning, the illegal and brutal practice of cutting off sharks’ fins for lucrative profits and discarding their lesser-valued bodies.
The festival is organized by Terra Nostra with support from MarViva, the Culture Ministry’s Cinema Center, Universidad Nacional (UNA), the University of Costa Rica (UCR), and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), among others.
For more info about the film contest, contact organizer Daniel Cavallini at 228-4317 or MarViva’s Michelle Soto at 290-3647. For info about the “Fertile Mother, Our Earth” festival, call Terra Nostra at 228-4317.
