Dear WildFilmNews readers,

It's been a month since the buzz of the Wildscreen Festival and for many of us it's back to the field or cutting rooms. But the takeaway for us was this sustained high of being part of some of the most stimulating interactions of any festival or gathering. There are a couple things worth mentioning in the aftermath.

It seemed, to me at least, that the competition aspect was rightfully relegated to a one night stand in the shadows of conversations with James Lovelock, Sir David Attenborough, John Hanke and Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme. The real question on everyone's lips was about whether what we do is too little too late or not. It seemed to pervade every conversation.

However there seems to be this schizophrenia in the business where we all talk about the Planet as if it is the only discussion worth having and then have a different conversation with broadcasters about ratings curves and mega predators and exploding snakes.

Now I have spent my life working with big cats, doing films and books and talks about them so I don't want to be down on big apex predators. They do hold eco systems together in many instances. But there really seems to be a public appetite for new environmental knowledge as well. There is a hunger by filmmakers to do something important and yet the bridge to connect these two seems to be broken.

What goes on under the euphoric glare of festival lights is all forgotten when the broadcasters get back to their desks. Yet every time we try something different, the ratings actually peak. It's a clear indication that audiences are not in fact feeding back what they like, but rather what of the present menu they prefer. This is very different.

The time is right for something else on the menu, something a little meatier.

What we try to do is deliver something that broadcasters can get their teeth into, lions, leopards, tigers and then dovetail a conservation film with that. We did one on poaching, one that talks heavily about the big cat declines and now one about rhino conservation. For us this is a long-term relationship with broadcasters, beyond one project, and as such we are able to work together and find what works for them subject-wise and what we really need to do for us, to be able to sleep at night. It's leverage I guess, and it's built on trust. But nothing Beverly [Joubert] and I do, as filmmakers, is done just for the ride. Every project we take on is based on a conservation issue we personally want to get out.

Coming from this, we started the National Geographic Big Cat Initiative this year, a fund (trust) that we raise money for to get to immediate emergency conservation projects involving big cats. It's just one way filmmakers can take a step beyond the influence of one film. We translate all our films into two African languages, and give them to schools and societies because the people we need to talk to don't always subscribe to the BBC or National Geographic. In fact those people are often among the 84% of people in Africa who still use collected firewood for all their energy resources, and to cook the one daily meal they have. To see a group of people sitting in the sand, gathered around a sheet strung between two thorn trees that bounces back images of leopards is a heart warming delight for any filmmaker and I can highly recommend it. At one of these gatherings, two vervet monkeys moved into position above the screen and started kicking up a fuss, throwing palm nuts down at the screen every time a leopard appeared. The audience was so enraptured that they shuffled aside so that they werent directly under the monkeys but their eyes never left the moving sheet and its images.

There is this debate about how effective we are being as filmmakers. Well here are some numbers to chew on. In 28 years we have produced films on lions, leopards and big cats in general. These films reach millions; one has reached an estimated billion people. So what have we achieved? In the past 50 years we have brought awareness and joy and celebration and appreciation... and seen declines of 95% of all the big cat numbers! At first I thought this was impossible. But it is true that lion numbers have dipped from 450,000 to 20,000 in 50 years. Leopards, tigers, cheetahs and jaguars are all on this same fast track to extinction. So here's the news... what we do when we produce great fangs and fur films is very little if our goal is to save the planet and ourselves from James Lovelock's prediction of 25 years, unless we flex and reach out beyond the medium we are so comfortable in.

We have to do better.

We are better, and talking to John Hanke [Google Earth] at dinner the night after his talk at Wildscreen, I was inspired by the iron will of someone who says, Hey, I don't know the answers but I have the unshakable confidence in man's ability to do the right thing. Right now that is finding a way to make substantial, really fast and bold moves to stop the human population from climbing at an exponential rate. Stop this and we have a chance to curb global warming, over production of plastics, the hauling out of fossil fuels, the plight of big cats, and all of the other things that threaten wildlife, natural resources and us. Population.

So if we have to leverage, if we have to be subversive about getting our message across by sneaking it into scripts or getting a film done for cost or free, now is the time. There are just too many people who don't think there is a problem, that breeding as fast as you can is a good, godly thing, and that climate change is a fad. This is a global state of emergency, that we can all be playing an active and positive role in that.

So my wife and I received a Panda Award. It's a great honor and we are both very pleased. It did however highlight another facet of our industry, a bit like the lion poisoning and rhino poaching we are covering in a film we are doing right now. It is poaching of a different kind.

Five years ago we found a leopard when she was 8 days old. We dedicated the next four years to finding out every thing we could about her, staying with her day and night. During that time we developed a real bond with her and we finished a film called Eye of the Leopard. She came to know us really well, and we engulfed ourselves in her life. After editing that film, we went back for another year because of this relationship to do a second film. At times she comes up and nudges my foot as a greeting, even now, and we are back in there doing a theatrical film about her, as we move into our sixth year together. Yesterday I received a call from the BBC, a researcher who had been tasked to ask how she is doing, and where she is, what her status is, when she may have cubs, how to get there, what the conditions are, what she hunts because they want to do a film on the life of a leopard. The very same leopard! At first I was shocked. There are 100,000 leopards left in the world and we both have to work on the same one? Especially one we have just invested 5 years of our lives in! A cat we have spent hard years, agonizing years in rain and dust and heat getting her used to us, to the way we work, one we have named and exposed to the world, almost as an ambassador for leopards, certainly a poster child for the Big Cat Initiative.

Then I remembered similar stories from a filmmaker in Australia and many others, where megabroadcasters muscle in on other filmmakers projects once they have done all the work, elbow them out of the way and then make wonderful claims about being the first to expose this amazing behaviour. We had a similar incident years ago when there was a very vocal claim to have been the first to film lions hunting elephants, years after two films of ours and some from a few others covering the same behaviour. I wonder why there is this competitive drive to claim this first time caught on film. Perhaps because it is becoming rarer to do that, and yet the expectation is there to do that, so it's worth fudging.

Coming out of Wildscreen filled with the spirit of what filmmakers can do to help change attitudes that will save the planet, and have to face the realities of competition, pettiness and the daily grind, when we could be much better, ethically, collectively is something that we all have to deal with. And it is hard to keep that higher goal alive. But yesterday was also a day we got two other letters, one from a woman in Australia who has been watching our films on this same leopard. She hasn't been well lately, but she is now convinced that the spirit and energy of the cat we are filming is making her feel better. You see she has terminal cancer and every moment of joy she can have is intensified beyond what we can even imagine. For us, this was a chilling moment, a hugely satisfying one that talks to whether natural history films can actually make a difference. The second note yesterday was from the National Geographic Society, letting us know that one of the board members was so moved by a talk we gave and the film we gave out that he is donating USD 1 million to the Big Cat Initiative.

So, it seems, what we do, does in fact come back full circle. It cuts through some of that frustration and certainly gives us the energy to launch ourselves back into the fray knowing that this profession is making a difference to making the planet better.

And surely that is the best reason.

All the best
Dereck Joubert