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

Christopher J. Gervais is an award winning producer. His animated film Dream won a 2017 Golden Lion for film and a Silver Lion for music at the 64th Annual International Festival of Creativity. He is environmental and marine scientist and has decades of experience in field work and research with multiple academic institutions and natural history museums. A former science and social studies teacher, later an administrator, he became the youngest principal of a public school in the state of Florida. While a graduate student, Christopher conducted fieldwork and research to study the Pleistocene Mega fauna and their fossils that were deposited over 10,000 years ago. His study of these extinct species informs his concerns for preserving biodiversity and was a significant factor in the founding of the WCFF. Christopher was one of the first scientists to conduct underwater vertebrate paleontology research. He is a professional, advanced scuba diver with NAUI, PADI, SSI and NASDS with over 2,500 logged dives. Christopher founded the WCFF in 2010 using his life savings to get the organization off the ground and has maintained the operations since then. He is a philanthropic supporter of conservation organizations across the globe. Christopher is President of the International Exploration Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, member of the Ocean Geographic Society, friend of American Philosophical Society.

“The history of the film Dream is I was contacted by an advertising agency a number of years ago that had a client who was an animation company that wanted to do a short animation on wildlife. So we met and we discussed how long this would be, and what the content would be. And they said, "Choose several species that are impacted right now." And we chose the baby harp seal because Canada in their great wisdom decided to start hunting baby seals again in eastern Canada. A rhino was chosen because, at that time, rhino poaching was the highest level it had ever been in history. I think more than 2,000 rhinos were killed that year just in South Africa alone, not even counting other countries. We chose to the humpback whale because some imbecile within the United States government decided that there were enough humpback whales now that we could start resuming whale hunting in this country. And the pelican was chosen because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which had devastating consequences. And we still have those consequences today. The oil is still there. It's just under the sand. It's not like all the oil has been cleaned up. We were very fortunate that that animation was presented at Cannes that year and it won two awards, a Golden Lion and a Silver Lion Award.”

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