Indian filmmakers' wildlife movie gets coveted award

Bangalore, Sep 3 (IANS) Indian photographer-filmmaker duo S. Krupakar and Senani Hegde's wildlife film 'Wild Dog Diaries' has won this year's Best of the Festival Grand Award at the eighth Japanese Wildlife Film Festival.

Krupakar said that their 47-minute documentary, which aims at understanding the social behaviour of the much-misunderstood Indian wild dog Dhole, had to compete with nearly 300 wildlife films at the festival held Aug 23-26 in Toyama, Japan.

'We had just entered the competition without any hope of securing an award. But despite stiff competition our film was able to get the most prestigious award in the festival,' said Krupakar.

Commenting on the dog species, Krupakar said: 'Dhole is shy and shows its abnormally elusive nature.'

Krupakar and Hegde, both from Karnataka, have made a big name in wildlife photography and organised several photo exhibitions in India and abroad. The duo won a lot of appreciation and awards for their work.

The filmmakers, who have been studying and writing about the cultural and natural biodiversity of the Niligiri Biosphere Reserve in the Western Ghats for more than 20 years, started working on the wild dog film a decade ago.

They duo say it wasn't easy to make the film. While collecting information for their movie they had to go through lots of problems. In 1997, forest brigand Veerappan abducted them while they were researching.

They, however, didn't have a bad time with the brigand and their time in captivity enabled them to understand his movements in the conservation perspective.

The photographers were released after nearly two weeks in captivity.

Copyright  IANS

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