WELCOME TO THE 3nd AMAZINE 2024 CALL FOR PAPERS
 

Amazine: Resilient Amazon

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In its third edition in 2024, Amazine returns to its original roots and the theme that stands as its founding reason and backbone: The Amazon, or Amazonia, nine countries with the largest river and forest system in the world. A complex, incomparable, and irreplaceable biome that provides environmental benefits not only to the region but to the entire planet, including climate regulation.

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There are countless reasons, well known to many of us, to continue focusing on this region of South America:

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• The Amazon is home to 47 million people, of which more than 2 million are indigenous people from approximately 500 different groups.

• It has an extraordinary biodiversity with very high levels of endemism.

• It represents 20% of the planet's freshwater in liquid state.

Recent studies and reports from experts and international organizations indicate that:

• The general situation of the Amazon is far from improving and the severity of this reality demands our commitment and immediate action, without pause and in alliances that mobilize masses and commitments from civil society, universities, political and governmental organizations.

Some of the increasing threats looming over the Amazon region are:

• Anthropogenic climate change.

• Deforestation.

• Expansion of livestock farming.

• Land grabbing.

• Health crisis, outbreaks of malaria and tuberculosis among indigenous communities.

• Loss of ancestral knowledge of indigenous communities.

• Changes in environmental legislation.

• Lack of information and environmental participation of communities.

• Illegal hunting, trafficking of fauna and flora species.

• Burning to clear land.

• Overfishing and killing of dolphins.

• Urban and industrial waste, mercury contamination.

• Illegal mining and other extractive activities inside and outside national parks, biosphere reserves and protected areas.

• Water sedimentation.

• Poorly planned infrastructure.

• Illegal crops.

• Presence of irregular and criminal groups.

• Unsustainable local and regional economic activities.

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From the association Watunna Venezuela, based in France and from Amazine, International Short Film Competition on the Amazon and the Environment, we continue with our mission and commitment to show and defend the socio-environmental reality of the Amazon in all its dimensions, through cinema and audiovisual productions as infallible means to expose the conditions in which this invaluable corner of the planet is found and its potential to promote change.

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In parallel, we seek to reveal the depth, creativity and the multiple talents of people, professionals and beginners who dedicate themselves, with great limitations, to tracing, creating, teaching, promoting values, leaving records, memory and testimonies through their cameras of photography and filming of a scenario that is at the same time complex, vulnerable, extraordinary and beautiful.

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This year 2024, aware of the numerous and urgent challenges facing the entire Amazon Basin, we have decided to name our third edition: Resilient Amazon.

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This concept, originally used exclusively for humans, has increasingly been extended to socio-environmental and natural settings and processes.

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Nature in this specific case, the Amazon, if we act with the urgency of the case, can also be resilient: it still has the capacity to adapt, renew, reinvent itself and recover from adversity.

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Saving it depends on all of us as a civil society, with political will, through universities, NGOs, and indigenous communities.

It requires constant surveillance and monitoring, teaching-learning, knowledge of previous experiences, new studies and project execution, as well as the participation of indigenous communities.

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To give way to urgent measures that allow to reduce and replace illegal mining, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, the presence of irregular groups, forced migration and harassment of indigenous groups, with economic activities, forms of entrepreneurship and sustainable alternatives, such as agroecology, zoo-breeding and ecotourism.

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Working together, lobbying, activism and outreach, we can change the destiny of the Amazon and steer it towards justice, respect for human rights and social equality, inclusive economic development, commitment and global responsibility.

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We invite everyone to register and be part of the Amazine team. By participating, your short film and its message could become part of the audiovisual heritage of our competition and be exhibited in several cities around the world.

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Welcome all.

Ana María Méndez - Schreier
President
Watunna Venezuela Association

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See also: Registration form and instructions