Evento

NYWCFF -Series 5: Sloths, Tamarins and Amazon

Saturday, February 2, 2013
Series 5 11:00 AM 1:00 PM
Theme: Central & South America

Meet the Sloths
Lucy Cooke, Producer
50 minutes
Country: Costa Rica
* World Premiere
**Appropriate for children
* Award Winner for Best Education Category

In a sleepy corner of Costa Rica near the town of Cahuita on the Caribbean coast near the border of Panama there's a very peculiar sanctuary. The only one in the world devoted to saving orphaned and injured sloths. Filmed over the course of the year, 'Meet the Sloths' is a humorous documentary following a handful of the resident sloths a surprising soap opera of love, loss and lust. The film begins in spring and the sanctuary is bursting with adorably cute orphaned baby sloths. The staff, led by sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo, must try and teach these babies how to be a sloth. The whimsical style, produced and directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Lucy Cooke, takes you inside the mind of one of the planet's most enigmatic creatures and reveals the secrets behind the sloth's smile.

Amazon Alive-Part 1: Jungle of the Mind
Christian Baumeister, Producer & Director
45 minutes
Country: Germany
* New York City Premiere

This is the story of how we have struggled to make sense of the enormity and complexity of the amazon rainforest. Using key animals such as jaguar, leaf- cutting ant, giant otter and the fresh water stingray, this documentary shows how humans have turned past fears of the hostile and impenetrable jungle into an understanding of it's unrivaled biodiversity. We discover that the forest is not just the result of millions of years of evolution. It's richness stems from struggle, upheaval and a remarkable event, the up-lift of the Andes, which changed the course of the Amazon River itself.

Cotton Tops
Frederico Pardo, Producer
20 minutes
Country: Colombia
Language: Spanish (subtitled in English)
* New York City Premiere
** Appropriate for children

The Cotton Top Tamarin is endemic to Colombia's Caribbean Coast and it is critically endanger of extinction. The socio-economic problems of the region are a threat to the Cotton-Top and its habitat. For the past few years, however, the conservation group "Proyecto Titi's" has been working with the community to help preserve the Cotton-Top and give the people an opportunity to succeed. The will for development in the region may be the Tamarin's biggest enemy in the near future.

*** Q & A with Rhett Butler, Co-Founder of Tropical Conservation Science and the Tropical Forest Network; Founder, President and Editor-In-Chief of Mongabay.