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The Association “Tropical Rainforests: The Film”

becomes

“Tropical Rainforests: The Future”

 

Letter from the president, Francis Hallé.

 

First and foremost, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your generous support, which has enabled our association to reach the goal it set out to achieve. Our project to make a film about the primary rainforests looks like it is to go ahead.

 

From a personal point of view, I’m overwhelmed by the realisation of a dream, which goes back more than twenty years. Your generosity has enabled me to meet Luc Jaquet, to visit  the Nourague forest (French Guyana) with him, to co-write with Luc the prologue to  “It was the Rainforest”, which you will soon be able to watch on the internet: a nine minute fund-raising film of pure emotion and wonder.

The arrival of such a talented director  has helped the film project take off in a spectacular way. Luc Jaquet’s own association, Wild Touch, is from now on responsible for fund raising for the film’s realisation. In agreement with him, and to avoid the two associations appearing in competition – when both are working together towards the same goal- I have made two decisions:

From now on, our association and its website are to be called “Tropical Rainforsts: The Future”. The making of the film will no longer be directly one of our aims. The necessary legal modifications are underway. In a few weeks, the renewed website will display a number of activities and proposals to help save the rainforests. I feel sure that you will be concerned by one of these forms of actions  and I take this opportunity to thank you in advance for your help.

The association Wild Touch is to take over the cinematic aspect of the project and its president, Luc Jaquet, is in charge of the film’s direction; for my part, I am at Luc’s side for any help I can offer. Your donations will go to Wild Touch, unless you are against this idea, in which case I ask you to notify me by email before the end of February. You might like to take a frequent look at the website (www.wildtouch.org), where you can consult:

– a list of donaters and an explication of where the money is going.

– a paypal (to be installed shortly), to enable the facility of future donations.

-the project underway and the stages of its evolution (voyages, filming etc)

-events around the film project (contacts, meetings, public presentations,etc)

Which leaves me to salute the tremendous,forever increasing  enthusiasm for our project to save the last tropical rainforests. The project may well concentrate on far off places but nobody disputes the urgence and importance of its message. Many of you out there have taken this message to heart and I would like to make a point of  thanking you for your investment. I have worked for a long time on this project and would like to continue , giving as much energy as it requires.

– The association has been recognised as being of “general interest” by the tax services.

The director, Luc Jacquet ( “The Emperor’s Journey”, “The Fox and The Child”), has joined us in the adventure. Francis Hallé and Luc Jacquet went on an exploratory mission to French Guyana  at the end of the summer. Read Luc Jacquet’s impressions in the following letter, which he wrote on his return to France, after a few days reflection.

Dear friends,

We are back from our two week  location scout in the Guyana rainforest, following the footsteps of the botanist Francis Hallé. This immersion in the heart of the primary forest has been a fantastic journey, far from the murmur of the world, from the noise of the roads, from the purring of the pirogues’ motors as they go upstream to reach the other bank, where the reign of the trees begins.

It was here that Francis told us about a fabulous world, that of the vegetal, the other “half “of the living world, and where he drew our attention to the inconsequential rank of the animal.  Standing at the foot of the “immobiles”, these beings  of sap, branches and leaves, and towered over by their  60 metres and by their potentially infinite life, I felt like a passing visitor. In this forest the prevailing “philosophy” of existence is so far from all that moves us, that  we are seized by it into  asking  ourselves who we are.

At each step Francis acted as an interpret between this world, seen for the first time by us, far more complex than I had imagined, far less hostile than it is held to believe and, above all, much more mobile and talkative than the impression given by these great erect trunks. Our perception of time here is no longer valid. We are in the nursery of the living world, in evolution’s antichamber, in the heart of what the poor word, biodiversity, attempts to signify.

Its easy to forget that not that far from here, in Brazil, Surinam and the Equator … this universe per se is disappearing before our very eyes. This makes me doubly impatient to embark everyone on the adventure of a great film.

Thanks to all those who made the expedition possible, will see you again soon to decide on what happens next,  maybe rather quickly, in the course of a journey with Francis and the forest raft  on the forest canopy of Laos next spring.

See you very soon

Luc

photo below  taken in the Guyana rainforest end of August 2010

left to right : Luc Jacquet, Francis Hallé, François Royet

copyright: Jake Bryant / Wild touch

Under the heading:  “Deforestation”  there is a link to Patrik Rouxel’s  film “GREEN” , which shows the current state of the Indonesien rainforest.

Francis Hallé’s report of the exploratory mission in Laos can be read under the heading: ” Mission in progress “

The association’s mission is  to promote the production of the first ever feature-length  film dedicated to primary rainforests in danger of extinction.

In a few years the forests, powerful witnesses to the origins of life, will  disappear and with them,  their rare biodiversity and extreme beauty.