Eco Short Category

The Macaw Project - Biologists, Ecotourists and Local Communities for the Amazonian Rainforest
Hungary, 2016, 26:51 minutes

Directed by: Cintia Garai

Synopsis:
A long-term scientific research project has been implemented in the Tambopata Research Center. Here in the Peruvian Amazon, biologists, veterinarians, and geneticists work tirelessly to study the enigmatic macaws in their natural habitat. The Macaw Project seeks to provide an alternative solution for biodiversity conservation, an internationally applicable model that can help to protect highly biodiverse places in many different regions of the Earth.

About the director:
Cintia Garai’s main interests are the great apes and Africa. She got her Master of Science degree in Zoology in 2006 in Hungary; her thesis was about the environmental enrichment of captive great apes. Then she started to work in the Congo with bonobos. Later she worked for a Hungarian wildlife filmmaking group, Filmjungle.eu Productions, and decided that she wants to make films for conservation purposes, especially in remote areas. That is how she got to Tambopata, Peru, where she filmed The Macaw Project. In 2015, she gained a PhD degree in Primatology, at the Kyoto University in Japan. Currently she is working in Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as a conservationist, and in the meantime she continues filming and exploring the possibilities of using films in different ways for nature conservation.

Official site: http://www.macawmovie.com