Category: Broadcasting

Fossil fuels and fossil fools in India

‘‘People in India, unlike the West, don’t understand the seriousness of climate change….They think global warming is a fantasy. Indians are using fossil fuel like never before. We have constructed oven-like buildings and spend enormous energy cooling them.’’

I came across these words by the well known Indian environmental film-maker Mike Pandey in an article in NewIndPress that surveyed how Indian documentary film-makers are rising to the challenge of communicating climate change.

The article, ‘Meltdown on Film’ published on 15 March 2007 highlights the formidable task of raising awareness in India, now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, consuming larger volumes of fossil fuels every year.

Mike knows what he’s talking about: his film Global Warming went largely unnoticed when it was released in India three years ago.

And he is one of India’s top notch film makers on environment, wildlife and natural history. He has won three Panda Awards — also known as the ‘Green Oscar’ — at the Wildscreen Film Festival held every other year in Bristol, UK — and considered to be the most important festival of its kind in the world. (Modest cough: I was on the jury of Wildscreen 2000, when we gave Mike one of his three Green Oscars.)

Viewer apathy is not the only problem that India’s environmental film-makers have to contend with. Here’s an extract from the article:

Like any environmentalist, our documentary filmmakers are “concerned” about issues like global warming. But the lacklustre reactions of research agencies (who ‘‘support” the cause but don’t really come forward to fund documentaries), zero interest from broadcasters who, according to one filmmaker, prefer ‘‘sexy environmental stories’’, together with viewer apathy, are the reasons why the few impressive documentary films on climate change vanish after a few screenings at festivals. Take the Public Service Broadcast Trust’s (PSBT) Open Frame, for instance, the annual documentary film festival held in Delhi. Or the roving environmental and wildlife film festival CMS Vatavaran, where open discussions are held after every screening. Barely a couple of films are chosen by the public broadcaster Doordarshan after they are screened at these two festivals, which is why most of the documentaries don’t ever reach the masses.

‘‘Public interest stories and documentaries are the last thing broadcasters want to show,’’ quips Pandey. ‘‘People like me are lucky to have found space on DD. Value-based programmes are nudged out so easily by broadcasters these days.”

The article continues:

A few years ago, when Mike Pandey returned to his favourite spot in Austria to capture a snowcap for one of his films, he was shocked to see it had melted. He says, ‘‘I had seen the ice cap the previous year. I had to go deeper into the area to get my shots. It’s common in Austria to see ice caps vanishing. You see blossoms and splendid crops in many areas.’’ After Earth Matters, which is being shown on Doordarshan, Pandey is coming up with a series of six films on global warming, which will talk about ‘‘using alternative energy for the future.’’

Whenever out for shoots at Lakshwadeep, Kochi and Gujarat, Mike has been noticing ‘‘visible changes’’ in ‘‘ocean ferocity’’ and where the sea neighbours the land. ‘‘The water has come in a bit more into the land over the years,’’ he observes.

‘‘You don’t have to be a scientist to notice these changes; you can see it all happening now. Unfortunately, people living along the Indian coastline will be the first ones to face any kind of major impact,’’ he adds.

On my visit to Hyderabad last week, I was told that there are now close to 50 TV channels that cover news and current affairs on a 24/7 basis (in English and other Indian languages). Yet this kind of news hardly seems to make the headlines….it’s probably moving too slowly.

Mike Pandey and other environmental film-makers have their work cut out for them.

“If (Indian cricketer) Sachin Tendulkar or (Bollywood star) Shah Rukh Khan loses his cell phone, the news will reach every nook and corner of the country, but the fact that iodine is essential for the human body is still not known widely,” Mike told India’s Frontline news magazine in 2004. Read full article: Nature’s film-maker in Frontline of 18-31 Dec 2004

Read TVE Asia Pacific website feature on Mike Pandey’s 2003 film on the whale shark in India

Digits4Change: Do ICTs make a difference?

When it comes to bridging the Digital Divide, there’s so much hype, rhetoric and confusion. For many in the UN system, it’s just another development issue to be bandied about at endless meetings and conferences, and to be reflected upon from 30,000 feet above the ground where they find themselves most of the time.

Yet, at the ground level, individuals and communities are adapting various ICTs to meet their practical needs and solve real world problems. I sometimes feel that whatever bridging of the Digital Divide will happen in spite of, and not because of, the UN agencies and other development players debating issues to exhaustion.

In 2005-2006, we at TVE Asia Pacific documented some of these efforts in different parts of Asia. We looked at a variety of technologies solving a range of problems. This became Digits4Change.

digits4change.jpg

Here’s our series intrdocution:

There are more poor people in the Asia Pacific than in all other regions combined. At the same time, some Asian countries have achieved the most advanced economies in the world. Their prosperity is partly due to how they have developed or adopted information and communication technologies — or ICTs.

How can the developing countries of Asia use these digital tools to help generate wealth, create more jobs and improve living conditions of people? Governments, private sector, civil society and researchers have been trying out various approaches for years. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 – 2005 took stock of what has been accomplished, and what remains to be done.

TVE Asia Pacific – a regional leader in using audio-visual media to cover development issues – embarked on documenting examples where ICTs have made a change in people’s lives in the world’s largest region. We investigated stories on distance learning, business process outsourcing, tele-health and rural connectivity.

The result is a new video series: Digits4Change.

Watch Digits4Change stories on TVEAP’s channel on YouTube

Read my views on the newly launched UN Global Alliance on ICTs for Development , published on SciDev.Net

One Planet’s Climate Challenge on BBC World

Climate Challenge is a new, weekly, 6-part series coproduced by our Geneva-based partner
dev.tv and UK partner, One Planet Pictures. It begins broadcasting on BBC World from Wednesday, 4 April 2007.

The series goes local and global to find here-and-now answers to climate change. It makes the point: in the fight against global warming, developed and developing countries must work hand-in-hand to find viable solutions for all.

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Here’s the blurb from One Planet Pictures website:

So it’s official. Even President Bush in his latest State of the Union Report has acknowledged that global warming is happening. The scientists of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that only swingeing cuts in the release of greenhouse gases can save our planet from becoming a Venusian hothouse.

But how can that be achieved when even the modest Kyoto targets are not being met by most rich countries? And when the world’s most populous countries are expanding their energy requirements at an unprecedented rate? What can be done to head off a catastrophe?

In Climate Challenge, One Planet Pictures’ film-makers focus on some of the most promising approaches to turning down the global thermostat. Climate Challenge goes local and global in search for solutions that won’t put a break on economic growth

The series will be distributed by TVE Asia Pacific after its initial run on BBC World.

For broadcast times, see dev.tv website or checkout BBC World programme schedule

BBC World is the commercially-operated international broadcasting arm of the BBC.

Cricket on TV: Fatal attraction?

Productivity in South Asia can’t be all that high these days. A good part of our 1.5 billion combined population stays up late into the night, watching live TV broadcasts of cricket matches of the ICC World Cup.

Because the championship is hosted in the West Indies, time differences mean that each match would begin in the evening and continue into the early hours of our mornings.

Lots of people turn up at work with bleary eyes.

But that’s nothing compared to the many tears shed, sighs heaved and fists raised when South Asia’s cricket playing nations — Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – lose a match.

The two cricket giants and rivals – India and Pakistan – both had shocking exits in the first round itself. This inspired much anguish, despair and anger. It also wrecked business plans of many South Asian TV networks, which had paid millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast World Cup cricket matches. Now they fear they cannot recover their investment.

Flying from Colombo to Hyderabad for an academic meeting, I read the latest (2 April 2007) issue of the Indian newsmagazine Outlook, which offered a good analysis of what went wrong for India in the World Cup. It’s one among many, many post mortems in the media.

Outlook Editor Vinod Mehta, one of India’s seniormost and outspoken journalists, writes a short piece in this issue, headlined ‘Fatal Attractions’.

In his typical style, he starts:
I told-you-so journalism can be both exasperating and juvenile. Thus, I get no pleasure in reminding you that four weeks before our determined fifteen left for the Caribbean, I had lamented: “Am I the only one turned off by Indian cricket? I’d much rather relax watching an old film than see our boys wield the willow. The occasional fluke victory is all we can hope for. The team looks pedestrian and, frequently, pathetic.

Then he gets more serious, saying we must ask ourselves if the media and the marketers are doing us a favour by injecting such hyper-nationalism ‘as they collectively raise unrealistic hopes of India’s conquests’.

He concludes:

“The martial music, the thumping of chests, the shouts of “India, India”, the painting of the national colours on faces, the patriotic exhortations of politicos suggests that the Cup is already in the bag; the winning is just a formality. When we experience not just defeat but a sound thrashing, the Indian cricket fan, who has been duped by slick promos and to some extent his own credulity, finds reality intolerable. If, instead, expectations were kept at a reasonable level we would not undergo such a tremendous feeling of being let down. We could cope with the disappointment.

“No other team in the World Cup, not even the Aussies and the Proteas, play under so much pressure, most of it induced by greedy advertisers hoping to exploit the passion for the game. I believe this exploitation has gone on long enough. The market must stop playing with the emotions of a nation. Meanwhile, we should remember we have just lost a game of cricket. We are not finished as a nation.”

Read the full commentary in Outlook Online

Arthur Clarke looking for signs of life in Colombo…

I have finally found my legitimate claim for being unique: I don’t follow cricket.

Yes, you heard me right. Despite being born and raised in Sri Lanka, and still being based there about half of my time, I have never been a great fan of cricket. I must be the only one in my office who gets a decent night’s sleep these days. Practically everyone stays up till the wee hours of the morning watching live TV broadcasts of the ICC World Cup cricket matches taking place literally on the other side of the globe: the West Indies.

There’s now a very close nexus between television and cricket. Live broadcasts beam instantly into our living rooms the action on a cricket field anywhere on the planet. In fact, thanks to the zoom-ins, slow-motion instant replays and other techniques, those who watch a cricket match on the small screen can share the action even better than the few thousand who witness it physically at the stadium. (And the screens are no longer very small: across cricket-crazy South Asia, sales have soared for plasma screens of increasingly large – if not mostrous – sizes.)

The man who made all this possible is slightly bemused — but not one bit affected — by all this frenzy. Sir Arthur C Clarke, science fiction author, futurist and inventor of the communications satellite, sits in his living room, pondering the near and far future of humanity that he helped transform into a Global Village.

That’s the only other person in the whole of Colombo that I know who isn’t infected by the current World Cup fever. (See my other post today for views of a rare Indian who doesn’t follow cricket and instead prefers to watch old movies.)

Writing a foreword to the UNDP’s Human Development Report in 2003, Sir Arthur noted: “Today, television rules how Sri Lankans work, dine and socialise. And when an important cricket match is being broadcast live, I have to look hard to find any signs of life on the streets of Colombo.”

We might opt out of following the cricket, making ourselves rather dull conversationalists these days, but if we dare to utter even a word against this de facto religion of South Asians, dire consequences are sure to follow.

A decade ago, Sir Arthur had a first hand experience to prove this. In a wide-ranging media interview, he told a visiting Reuters correspondent that he shared some people’s skepticism that cricket was the slowest form of animal life, because it takes so long. (A Test match can take as many as five full days, and still end without a clear result!).

Having mis-heard Sir Arthur, the Reuters man filed his story saying Arthur C Clarke calls cricket the `lowest form of life’.

That was enough to stir up a mini storm. It couldn’t have come at a worse time — Sri Lanka had just won the 1996 cricket World Cup and the country was still euphoric. For weeks, Sir Arthur had to cope with irate Sri Lankan cricket fans — as he told a visiting American journalist from The Philadelphia Inquirer, ‘I had a lot of explaining to do’.

Moral of the story:
1. Be always careful when talking to journalists.
2. Keep your criticism of cricket strictly to yourself.

Human Development Report Foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Communications for Goodness’ Sake

Read my later post: Arthur Clarke’s climate friendly advice: Don’t commute; communicate!

Have you made your million dollars yet?

Money, money, money!

Many development film-makers like to decry our society’s obsession with money, consumerism and greed. Some would make films that passionately promote sharing ideas and resources at community level, and advocate common property resources over private ownership.

But when it comes to rights of their own film/s, these very film-makers would become extremely possessive: they want to restrict it in every conceivable way.

They feel justified in such sentiment and action: after all, they have invested a great deal of time, effort, creativity and hard-won resoures to make their films. They must now seek a ‘return on investment’ like everyone else (it’s a material world!). Film-makers too have families to feed.

No argument on that last one. But it would be interesting to find out how many – or how few – development films deliver any appreciable ‘returns on investment’ to their makers. Certainly in developing Asia, development film-makers will be seriously endangered species if they had to rely on license fees or royalties for their survival.
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After a dozen years of extensive networking with environment, wildlife and development film-makers across Asia Pacific, I have yet to come across a single film-maker who made his or her million dollars from a film.

Yet, many continue to cling on to the traditional notion of copyright in film, perhaps hoping that sooner or later, that cherished million bucks would come calling.

And in the meantime, they continue to approach every known funding source – and many unknown and unlikely ones – for supporting their next film. At TVE Asia Pacific, we receive our fair share of these requests every month – and we are not even a funding source for independent films! These requests are accompanied by impressive CVs or filmographies, listing past films produced.

Produced, yes. But how many are circulating? How many have been seen outside film festival circuits, or beyond a one-off broadcast (or two)? How many films are available for educational, advocacy, training or activist purposes at affordable cost of duplication and dispatch?

The answer is depressing: precious few.

Because our film-makers are waiting for their million dollar deal or sale, and won’t let go of their creations. Even if many have been made using development donor (i.e. public) funding, these films are not in the public domain.

That, to me, is incongruent with the lofty ideals that many development films proclaim: sharing ideas and resources at community level, and advocating common property resources.

We have to walk our talk, or we risk joining the already burgeoning ranks of hypocrites in our societies.

The time has come for documentary film-makers, especially those covering development topics, to take a fresh look at copyright. That doesn’t mean abandoning all our rights to be known and acknowledged as creators of our films.

For a start, I strongly recommend an interesting and insightful essay, “Shoot, Share and Create: Looking beyond copyright makes sense in film“, written by a young Indian lawyer-activist specialising in intellectual property. Lawrence Liang is a Bangalore-based lawyer who works at the Alternative Law Forum. I had the opportunity of meeting the dynamic and articulate Lawrence at the Asia Commons meeting in Bangkok in June 2005 – he’s certainly a man to watch in this rapidly evolving field of managing our digital commons and how to safeguard the public interest in the bewildering era of digital media.
Lawrence Liang

Here’s how he starts his essay, which he wrote as an open letter addressed to Indian documentary filmmakers:

When I was in law school, I had great aspirations of wanting to be a filmmaker, and an FTII-type (Film and TV Institute of India, a prominent school for film-making) friend told me the best place to start was to watch a lot of foreign films and documentaries. So I did that rather dutifully and spent many hours when I should have been reading corporate law, watching documentaries.

My fondest memory of my placement in Mumbai with a law firm was when we took off to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and watched Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayashankar’s film on the Yerawada prison in Pune.

I gave up on the idea of becoming a filmmaker after we finally did do a documentary on law school. But by then the bug had bitten and I had fallen in love with cinema and the documentary form as well. I think watching documentaries has also made me a better lawyer than I would have been if I read Ramiaya on the Indian Companies Act. So if I have written this rather longish argument about why documentary filmmakers should start thinking about open content licenses, it is with a sense of repaying a debt.

Read the full essay at Alternative Law Forum website

Read my own call for recognising poverty as a copyright free zone

You got films on YouTube?

Earlier this year, we at TVE Asia Pacific decided to place all our short video films on YouTube.

We are always willing to try out new ways of reaching out to the various – and increasingly fragmented – publics. Any new media format or platform that comes into the public domain is to be explored and exploited to peddle our content.

With this in mind, we launched the TVEAPFilms channel on YouTube in February 2007. We have so far placed three distinctive TV series on this channel:

Digits4Change, which explores how information and communications technologies (ICTs) are changing lives and livelihoods across Asia (6 x 5 min stories)

The Greenbelt Reports, where we revisited tsunami-affected countries in South and Southeast Asia, investigating how communities co-exist with coastal greenbelts of coral reefs, mangroves and sand dunes (12 x 5 min stories)

Living Labs, our latest series which was released this month, which profiles global action research efforts to grow more food with less water (8 x 5 min stories)

Since then, attending film festivals in Singapore and Washington DC, I realised that many documentary film-makers aren’t yet convinced about this new outlet.

‘You got your films on YouTube?’ one film-maker asked me somewhat incredulously. ‘How can you be sure someone will not download and manipulate it?’

Well, we can’t be sure. But that doesn’t prevent us from engaging this new platform. We’re willing to take these risks.

Another colleague asked: ‘But isn’t that a place for all those ameteurs?’ Perhaps. But in this digital age, the division between so-called amateurs and professionals is blurring.

Some film-makers have started placing trailers for their longer films on YouTube. Since we produce a fair number of short, self-contained films — all of which come under the YouTube’s upper limit of 10 mins — we are able to place our entire films online.

And unlike broadcast television and even passive webcasts, YouTube allows our online viewers to comment on films, and if they feel so moved, even to rank them.

At TVE Asia Pacific, we want our moving images to move people…so they join the conversation. In that sense, YouTube is a good platform to be on, and a good community to be part of.

Do visit TVEAPFilms channel on YouTube. Tell us what you think – whatever you think.

The Nature of David Suzuki

One of my highlights in the recent week I spent in Washington DC, attending the DC Environmental Film Festival, was listening to a talk by the Canadian naturalist and television personality David Suzuki.

In a 90-minute presentation at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Suzuki talked about his childhood, early influences, academic career and public life. He kept his packed audience – over 600 people – spell-bound, entertained and inspired. It reminded me of the first time I listened to this charismatic geneticist: in the summer of 1991, on my first visit to his home city of Vancouver.

If anything, he had got better with age but, I was happy to note, hasn’t mellowed. He still has the same passion that has made him not just a highly successful science communicator, but an ardent activist for the environmental cause and the rights of indigenous people, or First Nations.

David Suzuki

Introducing their well-known host, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) says:
“Dr. Suzuki is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. His television appearances, explaining the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way, have consistently received high acclaim for over 30 years. He is the only network television science host who was actually a practising scientist.”

In his Smithsonian talk, Suzuki reminded us that his show – The Nature of Things with David Suzuki – is the only regular science programme that is broadcast on prime-time TV in North America on a mainstream public access channel. This might partly explain, he suggested, why Canadians are better informed about science and environmental issues that affect their daily lives. (In contrast, programmes like Nova go out on niche channels.)

The Museum of Broadcasting has this to say about the programme:
“One of the longest-running television shows in Canadian history, The Nature of Things has aired continuously since 6 November 1960. An hour-long general science program, the show began as a half-hour series–an attempt, as the first press release phrased it, ‘to put weekly science shows back on North American television schedules.’

Suzuki has been presenting the show without a break since 1979, and it is now branded by his name. When The Nature of Things with David Suzuki turned 30 years in l990, Suzuki wrote in The Toronto Star that in the gimmicky world of television-land, where only the new is exciting, “the longevity of a TV series is just like the persistence of a plant or animal species — it reflects the survival of the fittest.”

CBC’s official webpage for the show

Read a brief history of The Nature of Things

CBC profile of David Suzuki, and selected extracts and interview clips

Attacking the Messenger…again!

The Pakistani police attack on the popular, independent TV network Geo TV made international news during the weekend. Here in Washington DC, I read a half-page news features in the Washington Post, and was dismayed by this attack by law-enforcers on a reputed media organisation that operates within the law.

Geo TV, Pakistan

The Washington Post item read:

The Lahore protests on Saturday followed a clash in Islamabad on Friday in which police fired rubber bullets into crowds, detained key opposition leaders and stormed the offices of Geo TV, Pakistan’s most popular independent network.

The government has generally defended its reaction to the protests as the only way to maintain law and order. But Musharraf apologized for the raid on Geo TV in an interview with the station and indicated that the action had been executed without his approval. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz also visited Geo TV’s studios Saturday to express his regret, and the government fired 15 officers involved in the raid.

But Hamid Mir, the station’s bureau chief in Islamabad, said that was insufficient.

“They wanted to destroy this newsroom,” Mir said Saturday afternoon, his words punctuated by frequent coughs, the result, he said, of inhaling large amounts of tear gas Friday. “They were trying to send a message to the whole media by attacking Geo TV.”

The station was broadcasting live images of the protest Friday afternoon when it was attacked. Journalists filming from the roof reported that police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in an attempt to knock out their cameras. Video footage of the raid showed police smashing in windows and doors inside the building. Broken glass lined the lobby floors Saturday.

Mir said he was encouraged that the media did not appear to be giving in to what he described as government intimidation tactics. “This is the first time the media is showing a lot of resistance,” he said.

There we go again….South Asian governments never seem to learn! We have good friends at Geo TV, and are relieved to hear from them that they are unharmed and that they continue to broadcast. Our thoughts and solidarity are with them, in the weeks and months ahead, when they stand for the public’s right to know and for the freedom of expression.