A new documentary by the acclaimed Iranian movie maker Fathollah Amiri has released. The documentary portraits the story of the Critically Endangered Asiatic cheetah in Kavir National Park, one of the last cheetah reserves in the central desert of Iran.
In 2007, a research team from the Iranian Cheetah Society and Plan for the Land Society surveyed this remote area with the hope to confirm the presence of Asiatic cheetahs after about a decade. Although the team could successfully capture several cheetah photographs across the national park, all the pictures were eventually revealed of being belonged to one single male cheetah. The documentary explores beyond these results, showing conservation efforts to save cheetahs in Iran.
Entitled as “the black tear”, the documentary is produced in collaboration with Wildlife Pictures Institute, Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, Iran Department of the Environment, and the Iranian Cheetah Society. The black tear is going to attend a number of national and international events during 2015/16.
Documentries
ICS’ Persian Leopard Project aired on Dutch and Belgium TV channels
During the Persian Leopard Project in Northeastern Iran, a new leopard was successfully radio-collared very recently . This young male, the 4th leopard that has been equipped with GPS-satellite collars in this project, was anestethsized by Jacques Kaandorp, a well-known vet from Beekse Bergen Safari Park, the Netherlands. During his 2-week stay in Iran, Jacques was accompanied by a small group of Dutch documentary makers who filmed the project. Two short episodes from this documentary was aired on Dutch and Belgium TV channels recently. You can watch the first episode in Dutch here .
Led by Mohammad Farhadinia, the Persian Leopard Project in Northeastern Iran is a collaborative conservation-based research project between University of Oxford’s WildCRU, ICS, Iran Department of the Environment, and Panthera.
The Iranian Leopard has hunted the Munich Festival prize
The documentary “In search of the Persian Leopard” won the first prize of the Mountains Nature’ section in the 12th Mountain Film Festival in Munich.
This documentary which was made between 2005 and 2011by the Iranian Cheetah Society and directed by Fath’o’llah Amiri, was also the first wildlife documentary to win the first prize of the Fajr International Film Festival and several other international prizes.
“In search of the Persian Leopard” features some of the special leopard behaviors, the process of them being filmed, their prey and their rivals.
Some of the documented behavior traits are: territory marking by the male leopard, the search of the female leopard for a place to have her cubs born and the pursuit of a deer by a leopard. The process of making this documentary also shows the improvement and the development of equipment during this period of time.
You can have more information about this film on Wildlife Pictures Institute’s website and the link to the original article can be found on the Festival’s website.
“In Search for Persian Leopard” won two more awards in Cinema Verite Documentary Film Festival in November in Iran, making it the most outstanding ever wildlife film in Iran. Attended by more than one hundred films produced by filmmakers on a variety of topics, including environment, ICS’ Fathollah Amiri received two prestigious awards for the “Best Long Documentary” and the “Best Environmental Documentary” in Tehran.
As approaching the Iranian Presidential election in 2013, he hoped that “Let’s cross finger that presidential candidates talk not only about politics or economy, but also environment” which was highly applauded by festival closing ceremony’s audience.
The leopard film features ICS’ research biologists field works for six years to study the endangered Persian leopard in high altitudes of Alborz, northern Iran. Last February, “In Search for Persian Leopard” won the most prestigious award of the Iranian cinema, “Crystal Simorgh” as the best documentary of year, a ranking which has never been achieved by a wildlife documentary in the country. It has been effective to spread the word among Iranian community with more than 50 times of national broadcasting from IRIB. ICS film crew is now running projects to feature brown bear and Asiatic cheetah which you can find more details on the relevant webpage.“