Elephant documentaries bring conservation message of young Cambodians to big screen

The three films - 'My home', 'Memories', and 'Dull Trail' will all be screened at an online event on Friday 25 June. Three innovative documentary films, facilitated by a Bath project, show the impact of deforestation on wildlife and indigenous peoples in rural south-east Asia. Last updated on Friday 25 June 2021 - Three new documentary films will be screened later this week, each telling a story about the urgent environmental and development challenges facing Cambodia's wildlife and its indigenous people. The result of a participatory filmmaking programme led by the University of Bath's Dr Pete Manning with colleagues in Cambodia, these films bring home powerful messages from young people in the country about deforestation, wildlife reduction and exploitation - with important calls for action. Cambodia's forty years of conflict have left a legacy of environmental harms, with severe deforestation seeing the numbers of rare and endangered wildlife, in particular its wild elephant population, declining sharply. Indigenous communities, already marginalised in society, have suffered particularly badly due to development pressures on forests. Conservation practice around elephant habitats, and issues facing the communities who live alongside them, formed the basis of this work.