Discovering Rann

Discovering Rann

 

Discovering Rann is the latest documentary offering of Wild Tiger Productions and is aimed at various TV channels. It is an Official Selection inWildlife Conservation Film Festival, New York and had its World Premiere there in Oct 2019.

Discovering Rann is having its official web premiere on 15th August, 2020 at 11:30 am IST. Please click the link below to view it:

https://youtu.be/s0tIiYpFIpg 

 

The trailer of the documentary can be seen here:

 

Technical details:

Discovering Rann has been filmed with a Canon Cinema C300 camera.

Duration: 26 mins

Format: Full HD 1080p 25p

Genre: Wildlife/Travel

Sabyasachi Patra filming in Rann of Kutch

Synopsis:

Discovering Rann showcases the unique landscape and biodiversity of Rann of Kutch. It not only contains shots of beautiful animals and birds but also stands out due to the emphasis on showing the behaviour of wildlife, their unique adaptations to survive in the harsh desert ecosystem of kutch, the challenges faced including life and death struggles. The struggle of the species is also seen from the perspective of wildlife conservation.

It contains several small stories of the different species captured through painstaking efforts spread over many days and nights over the last 3 years in different parts of the Rann. We often like to root for the underdog. In this case the audience would love to root for the small Indian desert fox which uses its natural strengths to come out victorious by successfully thwarting the attack of a much larger Eastern imperial eagle. It is a battle of strategy. One misstep will ensure that the combatant pays with its life. There are life lessons for all human beings from this battle.

The plight of the jackal as a scavenger much lower down the pecking order will also make people feel for it. The impact of feral dogs, the knowledge of which till date have been limited to biologists, has been highlighted and together with the impact of our wasteful ways can now reach a wider audience through this documentary and hopefully lead to change in habits.

This documentary aims to showcase the denizens of Rann of Kutch in a new light and hopes that viewers can learn some life lessons from it, especially from the battle strategies adopted by the protagonists in the Eastern Imperial Eagle vs Desert Fox battle.


Background:

Rann of Kutch is a vast desert ecosystem with salt pans, marshes, grass lands in Gujarat and parts of it extends upto southern Pakistan. It is primarily divided into two parts – the Greater Rann of Kutch (GRK) and the Lesser Rann of Kutch (LRK).

Many photographers and visitors visit Rann of Kutch. We often see many picture postcard type photographs of various species. However, we didn’t find anyone digging deeper to tell the ecological aspects, the relationships between various species and how they manage to survive in this harsh landscape. So I spent days and nights driving an SUV in these areas and waiting for the nocturnal species to show up. A number of shots were filmed in darkness with just one torch light to capture authentic behaviour.

Director Biography:

Sabyasachi Patra

Sabyasachi Patra, an Engineer and MBA by education, worked for 18 years in the corporate world in Tata Motors, CII, Nokia (Head Govt. Relations) and MAIT (Manufacturers Association for Information Technology as Executive Director) at Delhi and served in various committees and panels like member of Jury of Govt. of India EGovernance awards, skills development initiative of Dept. of IT, Chairman of marketing committee of SEZ panel of EPCES etc before deciding to pursue his passion for filmmaking and wildlife conservation and set up his filming company Wild Tiger Productions.

Realizing the power of the films as a medium in spreading conservation awareness, Sabyasachi has been filming the vanishing wildlife and wilderness areas of India and trying to show the complex ecological linkages between various species.

To make conservation broad-based and increase the participation of the common man, in 2008 he  launched IndiaWilds® with ( https://indiawilds.com/forums ) an online Conservation and Wildlife Photography Forum.

He has been writing and publishing IndiaWilds® monthly newsletter (ISSN Number – 2394 – 6946) ( https://www.indiawilds.com/diary/category/newsletter/ ) since 2009, on conservation issues and the newsletter is circulated to around 10000 people. He encourages the more than 3400 members of IndiaWilds and the 10000+ readers of his newsletter to voice their protest by writing directly to the concerned authorities.

Director Statement:

 

Rann of Kutch is often seen as an vast desert landscape. So people don’t realise that the Rann is an ecologically fragile area and contains many different species living in complex ecological relationships. The sudden increase in human population and the effort being made to make it more suitable to human habitations by artificial canals and industries is creating a huge problem for the vast wilderness. My film “Discovering Rann” is an effort to document this vast wilderness and bring small substories with their ecological linkages so that people are able to appreciate and save this fragile landscape.

Credits:

Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Producer: Sabyasachi Patra

B Camera and Sound: Mrudul Godbole

Narration: Alex Warner

Music: Anil Nallan Chakravarthy

Copyright: Wild Tiger Productions MMXIX

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