We are very pleased to announce that Maria Falcon has won the FFC Conservation Filmmaker of the Year Award 2008.

As a jury we were quite torn and, had we been able to, would have given the award to both Maria and Paul. We felt that they both deserved it for their commitment and passion, and for the way they are bringing conservation messages to the public. Giving a double award would also have recognised that local work is equally as valuable as international work. But we knew that in the end we had to make a decision.

Finally, after a great deal of deliberation, we awarded Maria Falcon the 2008 FFC Filmmaker of the Year Award. Congratulations Maria!

We felt that Maria:

• Showed a clear, active and ongoing commitment to furthering conservation in Puerto Rico, her own country.
• Her overall body of work is of a high standard
• She’s using TV, video and web effectively to communicate messages in a way that clearly works for the local audience
• She works with local communities, children, scientists, pressure groups, organisations and politicians – the whole range of people needed to effect change – and change has happened because of her work
• It’s all done on a small budget and without help from any large organisation or broadcaster.

Paul Redman’s work is also extremely worthy of recognition:

• He has an impressive number of projects on extremely important local, national and global issues
• He shows a significant and ongoing commitment to training local communities so they can document the issues that affect them and get their message out to the international community
• He’s often working in ‘difficult’ countries.
• He shows a clear commitment over many years to communicating important conservation messages

Paul’s work notwithstanding, we felt that giving the award to Maria shows the FFC values of supporting the work of local filmmakers serving their own communities. We also hope that this award will encourage other indigenous filmmakers who currently only have access to their local media.

http://www.geoambientedelcaribe.com/demoweb
http://www.geoambientedelcaribe.com

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