An Italian Voice at the New York Wildlife Conservation Film Festival

The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival is starting on October 16th and one of the featured filmmakers is the Italian Giuseppe Bucciarelli.

WCFF brings together activists, experts filmmakers, non-governmental enthusiasts, representatives of the public and private sector, youth, scholars as well as wide audiences from all walks of life. The festival promotes programs and projects that contribute to the protection of biodiversity and sustainability. It is the perfect venue to showcase Bucciarelli's work.

Giuseppe is first and foremost an accomplished biologist with fifteen years of academic research experience from ecology to molecular biology to genome evolution who has been working in universities in Italy and the USA.
 

He began his film making career on a sailing trip down the Mediterranean from Syria to Lebanon to Israel to North Africa. The trip inspired the film, “Ahmed and the Return of the Arab Phoenix” (which will be shown at the festival). Ever since then, he has been making films, documenting the wildlife of Africa.
 

Over the years, his films were broadcasted and distributed throughout the US, Italy and the Middle East. They have been featured on PBS and the National Geographic Channel. Since 2009, Giuseppe has taken his scientific expertise to Kenya to start working as an independent filmmaker. He collaborates with several conservation organizations and wildlife experts to make films about endangered African ecosystems. He is also involved with local communities, helping them to solve human-wildlife conflicts.
 

He is the founder and director of Terra Conservation Films  full-service production company specialized in working with non-profit organizations and nature enterprises to make documentaries, promotional videos and stills focusing on the conservation of the natural world and the interaction between people and the environment.

The festival welcomes 4 of his films that will be screened on October 16 at 6 pm:

Laikipia, the Land of Life
There is a place in Africa where rivers, forests and savannas play a never-ending game with people. This place is Laikipia, central Kenya. Here dangerous wildlife share the land with thousands of farmers and their livestock. A perfect combination for trouble... But despite all odds the people living in Laikipia are fighting to make a dream come true.

Ahmed and the Return of the Arab Phoenix.
This is the story of a handful of visionary men who are fighting in the desert to protect what is left of the biodiversity of the Syrian steppe stretching from the Iraqi border to almost the Mediterranean coast. Their efforts will be rewarded by the discovery of the last middle eastern breeding colony of the Bald Ibis in the wild, one of the rarest migratory birds and a symbol of wisdom for the Bedouins of the desert.

Spotter Come Home
A 7 minute feature of a five year-old male Black Rhino who have wondered into the land of poachers and must find his way back to Lewa Downs conservancy.

Walking with Baboons

They are short, hairy and funny looking. They are also astute, strong and well organized. They are baboons. Widespread all over Kenya , these monkeys are often considered pests. But a day spent walking alongside a troop of wild baboons in the Rift valley will change our mind.

“My stories need to have some emotional impact,” Giuseppe told i-Italy when asked what kind of stories he in interested in portraying, “Even if they are local stories they need to represent issues of environmental conservancy that are universal.”

What brought you to make documentaries?

After working for several years at the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples, I took a long trip on a sail boat. It lasted 5 years and it took me to all corners of the Mediterranean. I arrived in Syria and I met an Italian, Gianluca Serra, who then worked for FAO. He had just found out, by collaborating with the local Bedouin population, we could witness the last middle eastern breeding colony of the Bald Ibis. I was in the right place at the right time. I had a small video camera with me and although I had no film making experience I really wanted to tell this story with some images. I just wanted to show what as an audience member I would want to see... although I did not really know how to accomplish that. Two years later Ahmed and the Return of the Arab Phoenix was born and broadcasted on National Geographic Italia. It has won 6 international awards.
 

Giuseppe owes a lot to that first film of his, which he calls one of his favorites, although he made it with much inexperience, balanced by a consuming passion for his work.

And even today his passion brings him to shoot stories he loves that oftentimes are accompanied by crazy incidents. “A year ago, while shooting Laikipia, the Land of Life, I fell off the sky on a plane as a diving chicken, I was charged by elephants and rhinos and I had a totally absurd incident... I fell on my camera consequently I broke an artery and lost 4 liters of blood...it was a real blast!”

Now in Giuseppe's future there is a new film on food politics to be shot in November in Yemen.

Meanwhile on the 16th he will be in New York to present his films at the WCFF.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to meet like-minded conservationists and to be intellectually stimulated by discussions on issues that concerns us all. The film screenings and panel discussions will take place at the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium.