CHRISTOPHER J. GERVAIS - Founder/CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival - Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

CHRISTOPHER J. GERVAIS - Founder/CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival - Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

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Founder & CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

I've been fortunate over the last 13 years to meet some of the world's leading conservationists. Dr. Sylvia Earl, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, his Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who came to the film festival in 2014, where we showed some films from his foundation. And there have been a number of others, award-winning filmmakers, and a number of celebrities that have come to the film festival, Academy Award Winner James Cromwell. We've had other celebrities, from Paul Giamatti to Alec Baldwin to Sigourney Weaver, all of whom may have a passion for, if not saving wildlife, then for the environment. And I have found them very humble, very easy to speak to, and I'm immensely grateful that they took the time to come to WCFF from their busy schedule. And we hope to build more relationships.

JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

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Explorer · Presenter · Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen. I can no longer feel the fingers in my left hand. The glacial Antarctic water to see through a tiny puncture in my formerly waterproof glove. If this water were one-tenth of a degree colder, the ocean will become solid. Finding the knife-edged freeze is depleting my strength, my blood vessels throbbing in a futile attempt to deliver warmth to my extremities. The archway of ice above our heads is furrowed like the surface of a golf ball, carved by the hand of the sea. Iridescent blue, Wedgewood, azure, cerulean, cobalt, and pastel robin’s egg meld with chalk and silvery alabaster. The ice is vibrant, right, and at the same time ghostly. The beauty contradicts the danger. We are the first people to cave dive inside an iceberg. And we may not live to tell the story.

IAN SEABROOK

IAN SEABROOK

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Award-Winning Underwater Director of Photography

It’s about leaving the planet in a better condition than it is currently. What you’re witnessing is years of neglect. It’s the humans who have screwed it all up, and the warming of the earth is no different. The oceans are changing. The topography is changing. Mussels are being fried when the tides recede. This is all unnatural. Or maybe it’s natural. I think it’s Mother Nature just being pissed off and saying, “This is what you get.” And so it’s up to everyone to change their ways. Their shopping habits, their eating habits, how much gas they use. All that stuff which people think “that can’t affect anything.” Well, you’re seeing the result of it now

TEMA STAIG & ALLISON VANORE

TEMA STAIG & ALLISON VANORE

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Tema Staig · Women in Media Executive Director & Art Director
Allison Vanore · WIM Secretary & Emmy-Winning Producer of After Forever

I started Women in Media in 2010 as a sort of community group. We talked about women above and below the line because there weren’t any organizations or conversations really happening about women in the below the line positions, meaning women in the crew who are in the camera, art, grip and electronics departments. There were only conversations happening about more women directors and, being a scenic artist and production designer, I knew that there are so many women in the crew and there’s only one director. So if we only aimed for one, we would never get to parity and there would never be room like myself who wanted to advance from these crew positions.