16 September,2009 07:57 AM IST | | Ganashree Kedlaya
Catch a photo-exhibition and a documentary film on elephants this week. Leading nature experts will attend the screening
They are gigantic and beautiful, share strong family bonds, honour our festive celebrations with their presence but Asian elephants today, are classified as the most endangered species in the world.
The Scientific Service of the French Embassy and the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation (ANCF) present the screening of Elephas Maximus by Philippe Gautier and Prajna Chowta. An exhibition of images of Asian elephants in India will be displayed.
The lost herd
The film Elephas Maximus is captured in the dense forests, near Mysore, that is populated with wild elephants.u00a0
The movie has two parts, the first one Of Elephants and Men captures 5000 years of history of elephant trainers, or mahouts. "To enter and discover the elephant world is one thing but to be accepted by the elephant men, who are the guardians of a 4000 year-old tradition is another, because their secrets are well guarded as they have a fragile existence in the confrontation with modernity," says Prajna.u00a0To the eye of a new comer, a forest looks like an indecipherable mosaic. But the experienced mahouts read it like a book. They can interpret the slightest detail, decode the signs, and reconstitute the behaviour and whereabouts of the elephant throughout the night. While the elephant has accepted to collaborate with man, deep down, it remains a wild animal. And rather than a master, the mahout feels like a servant. The fragile balance of mutual consent determines this relationship," she adds.
In the second part Meetings with Remarkable Animals, Asian elephants in the wild are captured in their natural habitat where they face the biggest threat of extinction. "Among the 50,000 Asian elephants, about 15,000,u00a0 almost a third are captive. They have been captured because they have killed people or were born from tamed parents. The tradition of the mahouts is essential to their survival, and if this knowledge disappears, the elephants will have to be put down. I think they deserve better," says Prajna.
Fighting for a cause
Prajna Chowta, an ethnologist and her filmmaker husband Philippe Gautier have been documenting and filming elephants for many years. Their film Hathi was awarded the Golden Award and Elephas Maximus has been widely screened on international channels. The couple lives at the base camp of the Aane Mane Foundation, deep in the reserved forest near Madikeri. "It has been 16 years since I started looking for elephants, looking for elephant people, looking for elephant places," says Prajna. "I wanted to go back to the roots of elephant training. Try to understand the psychology of the elephants, the mechanism of taming and build up my own experience of communication with them. The problem is that this knowledge is jealously guarded by only a few communities. So, I asked the help of two mahout friends, Mujeeb Khan and Kudrat Pasha from Sakrebail camp, Shimoga," says Prajna.u00a0
"To understand the wild, I wanted to keep two elephants. It took a long time to find the right place. I wanted a perennial source of water nearby; I wanted wild elephants around and no neighbours. And now I live here with my two elephants and four mahouts in the middle of the forest, in the South of India," she adds.
Philippe Gautier and Prajna Chowta, eminent wildlife ecologist and leading authority on the Asian Elephant Professor Raman Sukumar, and other well-known conservationists and ecological scientists will attend the screening.
At: Atrium, Alliance de Fracaise,u00a0
On: The Photo-exhibition is on Septmeber 18, 19 and 20.
The film will be screened on September 19, 7 pm
