The Pack' nominated for BBC Wild Screen Film Festival
Muralidhara Khajane| Krupakar, Senani have made documentary |
Krupakar and Senani
MYSORE: “The Pack”, a documentary film made by Mysore-based photographer-team, Krupakar and Senani, on the Dhole, known as the Asiatic Wild Dog, has been nominated for the BBC Wild Screen Film Festival.
The wildlife documentary produced completely in Asia has been selected for the “Open Section” of the film festival, which will be held in Bristol (United Kingdom) in October.
According to Krupakar and Senani, it is the first longest documentary film made on Indian predators. It is important that “The Pack” has been selected for behaviour section.
Speaking to The Hindu, Krupakar and Senani said that the fifth episode of the five-episode documentary made on the life of the Dhole was selected for the BBC Wild Screen Film Festival along with the two episodes of a landmark BBC Life Series directed by natural history film-maker Sir David Attenborough.
It is significant to note that Krupakar and Senani made “Wild Dog Diaries”, a unique documentary film on the Dhole, a species of the Canidae family. It is also known as the Asiatic Wild Dog and less known as the Indian Wild Dog and the whistling hunter (due to the whistling sound that it makes).
The film won the Festival Grand Award 2007 in the Japanese Wildlife Film Festival held in Toyama, Japan, where it beat 320 other entries to win it. It also won the best film award in the environmental film festival, “Vatavaran-2007” held in New Delhi, besides the Asian Television Awards (Singapore 2007) as the best documentary film.
The Asiatic Wild Dog is a species of wild dog. It is an unusual predator living in a social pack. Though facing extinction, it has received little attention, unlike the wolf or the African hunting dog. “Wild Dog Diaries” is the first documentary on wild dogs Earlier efforts efforts by various individuals and groups, including BBC and National Geographic Society, failed.
As far as “The Pack” is concerned, Krupakar and Senani note that till date it was common assumption of wild life experts that “inbreeding” is a common thing in Asiatic Wild Dogs. However, the film dismisses the myth with authentic documentation.
The photographer-team says that “The Pack” was shot entirely in the Nilgiri bio-sphere reserve for nearly three years. While Krupakar, the narrator, turns to Bomma, a tribal man, for help when all scientific learning fails to bridge the mistrust between him and his elusive subject in the “Wild Dog Diaries”, in “The Pack”, Senani unveils the world of the Dhole with a voice-over of Amarjit Dev.
What follows is a rare synergy, where wisdom complements modern learning culminating in the unveiling of one of the most mysterious predators [the Dhole]. “The film stands apart because of its effort in projecting different dimensions of the predator's life and showing its unknown behaviour to the world,” they say.
According to Krupakar and Senani, TV channel Animal Plant will telecast all the five episodes (30 minutes each) of “The Pack” across 140 countries from June 13.
