Wildscreen Builds its Own Cinema

What do you do when your festival has outgrown its host city? Why build your own temporary venue, obviously. That’s what Bristol’s biennial Wildscreen festival of natural world storytelling is doing for this year’s event, which runs from October 15-19.

“We came up with this cunning plan,” laughs Wildscreen Director Lucie Muir. In addition to making use of existing venues such as the Watershed, Arnolfini, St. Georges and Cinema De Lux, Wildscreen will be constructing its own ‘hub’ in Millennium Square, working closely with We the Curious. During the day, this will become a focus for networking among industry delegates who flock from all over the world, while each evening its 100-seat cinema will play host to many of the festival’s 33 public screenings of the best in natural world filmmaking.

Now in its 36th year, Wildscreen is firmly established as the world’s biggest environmental and wildlife film festival. It’s also reckoned to be Bristol’s longest-running festival. There have been plenty of changes over the decades, the most welcome of which is the increasing emphasis upon environmental responsibility. These days, there’s no marvelling at animal behaviour while chowing down on the cast. “Everything we do in the hub is going to be 100% plant-based,” confirms Lucie. “We’ll be plastic-free and palm oil-free. We’re also going to have our own café/bar, serving plant-based food.”

Blue Planet II – leading the field with seven Panda Award nominations

Unsurprisingly, the BBC’s world-renowned, Bristol-based Natural History Unit continues to dominate the nominations for the festival’s Panda Awards – or ‘Green Oscars’, as they’re colloquially known. This year, the breathtaking Blue Planet II leads the field with a well-deserved seven nominations. But the city’s many other natural history production companies are recognised too, with six of them receiving nominations.

Giraffes: Africa’s Gentle Giants from Bristol’s AGB Films

Just behind the NHU is Keo Films, whose Rise of the Warrior Apes has five nods. Also in the running are AGB Films for Giraffes: Africa’s Gentle Giants, Mike Birkhead Associates for H is for Hawk: A New Chapter, Offspring Films for Monkeys – An Amazing Animal Family: Asia, and Humble Bee Films for Attenborough and the Giant Elephant. As for the next generation, a brace of students from UWE’s MA in wildlife filmmaking are up for awards: Lindsey Parietti for Blood Island and Eline Helena for M6nths. Find out who bags the gongs at the Panda Awards Ceremony, which this year shifts to the Passenger Shed on October 19.

Rise of the Warrior Apes from Bristol’s Keo Films has five Panda Award nominations

Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, isn’t it a tad embarrassing that wildlife filmmakers travel from all over the globe only to see Bristol production companies clean up year after year? ” Embarrassing? It’s great,” laughs Lucie. “Our jury is international, so it’s all fair. But this does show you that 50 years on from the foundation of the Natural History Unit, Bristol is still the heart of natural world filmmaking.”

UWE student Lindsey Parietti’s Blood Island – up for an Emerging Talent award

Wildscreen isn’t really about big-name guests, though Lucie admits to a long-term ambition to lure Leonardo DiCaprio to the city at some point. This year, Oscar-winning (for The Lion King) composer Hans Zimmer is coming for a special ‘in conversation’ event at the Cinema De Lux on October 15. Although he’s perhaps best known for his collaborations with Christopher Nolan on the The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk, Zimmer also scored Blue Planet II and is a committed environmentalist.

H is for Hawk: A New Chapter from Bristol’s Mike Birkhead Associates

Another fascinating element of the Wildscreen forum is that it plays host to some often heated arguments about where the industry is going. Not so long ago, there was outrage over a nomination for a film about dragons on the not unreasonable grounds that, er, dragons don’t actually exist. And the death of reptile-wrangler Steve Irwin provoked an evocatively titled ‘Wild Snuff’ debate about misrepresentation of the animal kingdom as a result of pressure on filmmakers to provide ever more lurid and sensational images of bestial sex and violence to lure the advertiser-friendly affluent young male audience.

Attenborough and the Giant Elephant from Bristol’s Humble Bee Films

So what are the hot topics for 2018? “The big talking points are about how we engage different audiences and demographics,” says Lucie. “Platforms are changing and we need to adapt our storytelling to attract people who don’t naturally sit down and watch TV. Ultimately, we all want more people to care about the natural world, so we need to make sure we’re hitting those younger audiences as well. There are a lot of new productions coming out on some of the new platforms. Netflix has just commissioned its first natural history series and that’s being produced by Silverback Productions in Bristol.”

Monkeys – An Amazing Animal Family: Asia from Bristol’s Offspring Films

What about the dangers of dumbing down? Surely the great thing about the superb ‘blue chip’ Natural History Unit productions we all love is that they defy prognostications about fracturing audiences by getting huge viewing figures without resorting to the depressing banalities of the modern TV documentary (celebrities on fake ‘personal journeys’, hyperbole overload, needless padding, endless recaps, etc)? “Yes, those attract really big audiences, but there are lots of different types of natural history documentary out there and sometimes those platforms aren’t best for them, whereas online platforms might be. It’s a big marketplace and people like watching different types of content, so there’s a space for everything. There’s a real push for online content right now.”

One suspects this is a debate that’s only just beginning…

You can see all the Panda Awards nominees in Wildscreen’s public screening programme. See our comprehensive film listings for full details and screening times.