UNDERSCORING the importance of protecting Guyana’s environment, moreso our forest resources, an inaugural Environmental Film Festival was held last Saturday at the Umana Yana.
The festival sought to use the creative industry component of films (via short films and documentary features) to encapsulate Guyanese in appreciating the abundant natural resources and greenery blessed with while plugging environmental sustainability.
Minister within the Ministry of Education with responsibility for Culture, Youth and Sport, Nicolette Henry, acknowledged the power of story-telling on effecting changes in people and attested that this festival could become a “beacon of cultural creativity for Guyana.”
In this regard, she noted that in her capacity, she will ensure that Guyana’s creative sector is fostered and said, “Guyana can become a leader in the regional film industry.”
Presented was a series of short films produced by partnering bodies such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Guianas, the Protected Areas Commission (PAC), Conservation International Guyana, Green Screen TT, and the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development.

This Environmental Film Festival was held under the wider Timehri Film Festival (TFF), which is a festival that seeks to expose and highlight local and regional talents in the film industry and is presented by the Caribbean Film Academy (CAFA), Rewind and Come Again (RACA) and Studio Anansi (SA).
While it was alluded to earlier in the day, CAFA co-founder and TFF Director, Romola Lucas, confirmed that this environmental film festival will become an annual event in Guyana, held around this time (May/June) every year.
Notably, the idea of this festival is taken from its namesake in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and thus it was only befitting that Green Screen TT (the Environmental Film Festival in T&T) presented. The documentary film, “A Better Place” produced in 2015 by Carver Bacchus, sought to highlight five different environmental projects in T&T and prove some context to undertake similar projects in Guyana.
Green Screen TT is part of Sustain T&T, an organisation that focuses on raising awareness, exchanging information and encouraging dialogue among stakeholders through the use of creative methods, such as film and special events.
Conservation-themed films were presented first. The first film presented, named “It is love”, was a short film showcasing Guyana’s rainforests and measures taken to protect these resources, including the extension of the Paris Accord of 2016 which extended the conservation of Protected Areas of Guyana. This film was narrated by President David Granger.
There was also an older film presented, “Kanukus: Mountain of Life”, which was produced in 2005 before several measures of environmental sustainability and conservation were undertaken in Guyana. It provided a chance for viewers to actually see the changes that have occurred over the years in Guyana in this regard.
The next set of films presented was from community-owned Best Practice for Sustainable Resource Adaptive management (COBRA), a research project funded by the European Commission.
These films invited viewers to show that our indigenous communities do not need a “top-down” approach to solving their problems, but rather developing indigenous, best-practice solutions to combat their challenges and share these with the rest of Guyana.
The COBRA films encompassed participatory videos from indigenous communities, most notably speaking in their native languages. These films were shown to the indigenous peoples who participated as well as other indigenous communities in 2014. Though the films allowed for insight into good environmental practices of the indigenous peoples, it also acted as a means to allowing the preservation of their language.