Durban - “You will be able to see someone across the room and wave at them. You’ll be able to approach them and chat to them. You can even give them a big hug.” All from the safety of your living room.
So says Durban film-maker Noel Kok, one of the founders and executive director of the Nature, Environment and Wildlife Filmmakers (Newf) Congress which, in a first worldwide, will hold its fourth congress from September 20-25 using social virtual reality (VR) headsets.
The conference networking session will be at a watering hole; the plenary will be at an outdoor amphitheatre with a mountain range; the Under the Baobab Sessions will held in the shade of an enormous old baobab tree and the screenings will be held in a cinema, with glass windows through which you can see the night sky. National Geographic is hosting a photo-exhibition in a beautiful cave.
“Enter Covid-19,” Kok says. “We can’t do this the same way. We can’t gather in person. We can’t work, can’t film, couldn’t plan. But we also didn’t want to bury our heads in the sand.
"While the world continues to elect mad men who don’t listen to science, the message of conservation is more important than ever. We need stories of hope.”
He said while everyone had switched to Zoom, it had limitations.
“While it’s amazing, the biggest challenge is engagement. The numbers fluctuate so much. People switch off the video and listen with one ear. So I needed another way to host it. I spoke to delegates and one of the things they said they would miss the most was that we had created a spirit and energy in the room and a sense of community of everyone coming together for the protection of the planet,” Kok said.
The headsets, which will be delivered to delegates, are from Habitat XR and feature gorilla eyes. They were used for a shoot of the gorrillas in Rwanda for the Ellen de Generes show.
“When we took the concept to National Geographic, they were so excited. It’s the first time anyone is trying this anywhere in the world and coming from Africa that’s great,” he said.
Kok tells of his “very chequered career” before getting into environmental film-making, from running his own record label and a cinema, to making music videos.
“However, I’ve always had a passion for wildlife and conservation.”
He tells how he saw his first “rhino” at the age of 6 or 7, back in the '70s.
“Well, my first version of a rhino,” he says. “I was playing outside a shop in Pinetown. This lady walked by with her groceries and I greeted her. She gave me 20 cents. We were dirt poor and this was more money than I’d ever owned. On the back of her car was a save the rhino sticker.
“It made a connection. I would look out for that sticker, although the sad part of it was that during that period, it was only ever white people in the car."
“But it stayed with me for the rest of my life. It was only years later I took the opportunity to go to a nature reserve and actually saw a rhino in the flesh.
Kok was making a music documentary in 2009 when rhino poaching started in earnest again. “I thought, I can’t be a spectator, so I shifted my business into documentary and wildlife films. Our first series totally bankrupted us. We didn’t know what we were doing and were the only people of colour in the wildlife space,” he says. It was out of that experience that Newf was born
“We were looking at an industry and felt that it was a sitting duck for the radicals to walk in and say, ‘take it all away because there’s no transformation’. So how do we solve that, when the black kids are not coming into wildlife space? All they want to do is make the next Generations.”
He points out that the world uses so much of Africa’s wildlife, but there was no place to meet and discuss and work on telling our stories. Instead we were letting others tell what they thought were our stories.
Newf was launched in 2017. Kok says they quickly realised it couldn’t just be an annual event and so it developed into an all-year-round skills outreach programme.
Newf labs fund young film-makers with R50 000 each to produce their first short film, with professional mentors. To date, 16 of these have been broadcast on 50/50.
The congress itself has grown, and last year hosted about 350 delegates. It has also developed international partnerships with National Geographic and the Jackson Wild film festival, the environmental Cannes..
“It’s been quite a ride in a short space of time,” Kok says, “But it hasn’t been easy.”
This year’s fourth congress will drive a strong transformation agenda. “We try to as inclusive as possible and invite established filmmakers to be part of the congress. Many have responded and are acting as mentors and getting involved in skills training programmes,” he says.
Kok is keen to stress that the congress is not just for techno geeks or gamers. “Is for a group of passionate filmmakers, scientists, conservationists and story tellers to get the message across to act and act now. The planet given us a final written warning. We need to come together to fix it.”
The Independent on Saturday