Harriet Nimmo

TV Real Weekly, August 20, 2008

Chief Executive

Wildscreen

Every two years, wildlife and environmental filmmakers and commissioning editors from across the globe descend onto Bristol for the Wildscreen Festival. Producers vie for the coveted Panda Awards and use the event, this year taking place from October 19 to 24, to network with representatives from leading factual broadcasters worldwide, on the hunt for new programming ideas.

The event is a cornerstone activity for the British charity Wildscreen, whose mandate is to promote “greater understanding and appreciation of the natural world by harnessing the power of wildlife imagery,” explains Harriet Nimmo, the chief executive of the organization. “The festival’s aim is to celebrate and promote excellence within the wildlife media industry so that there’s more filmmakers around the world making better programs, [in order] to increase the global viewing public’s awareness and understanding of nature.”

Nimmo is proud of the diversity in this year’s crop of finalists for the Panda Awards, submitted from 42 countries, among them Iran, Estonia, Cameroon and Bangladesh, in addition to the usual suspects in Western Europe and North America. “We work very hard to make sure Wildscreen is as international as possible,” Nimmo notes. “We try to build up really good networks in other countries and encourage and support other wildlife and environmental film festivals, just to get the message out.”

This year’s entries are also diverse in their subject matter and their approach to the natural world, Nimmo continues. “From the more traditional, stereotypic blue-chip animal-behavior films right through to pets and vets, as well as the wider environmental conservation and earth science subjects. This year’s finalists include films on rare chickens, lawn care, crude oil, talking insects and bicycling penguins.”

The presentation of the Panda Awards—with Joanna Lumley as host—comes towards the end of a week packed with sessions on the latest developments in wildlife filmmaking. Among the highlights this year, Nimmo says, is the Meet the Commissioning Editor strand, with National Geographic’s Janet Vissering and the BBC’s Tim Martin among those taking part. There will also be a series of master classes, kicking off with Nicky Cheetham, the managing director of the Endemol subsidiary Cheetah Television, discussing the art of storytelling in wildlife filmmaking. Nimmo also cites the keynote lineup as a strong draw this year, headlined by David Attenborough.

While Nimmo is busy getting ready for Wildscreen this year, she is also moving forward on the charity’s other key initiatives: ARKive and Wildscreenings. ARKive, Nimmo explains, is a “global, centralized digital data bank of films and photos of endangered species. We work with filmmakers and photographers who are banking copies of their material into ARKive, and then we make that material freely accessible online for educational and scientific use.”

Wildscreenings, meanwhile, is an outreach program, Nimmo says, intended to “reach, engage and inspire new audiences, especially in developing countries and emerging markets where there’s greatest pressure on the environment. We’re taking some of these wonderful films that we see at the festival and some of these inspiring filmmakers out to other countries to help encourage and support those countries’ own filmmaking industry. We’ve been working in India and in China, and then we have other countries on the horizon, including South America and Africa.”

A ten-year veteran of Wildscreen, Nimmo, a former zoologist, refers to her current role, which she has held for five years, as a “dream job. I am passionate about the use of film imagery as one of the most powerful and emotive tools. How do you make people care, how do you grab their attention, how do you ignite that first spark of interest, especially with more and more of us living in urban environments? It’s through the power of TV and the Internet and seeing all those incredible images.”

—By Mansha Daswani