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Bel­ize: UN­BEL­IZE­ABLUE

What is at is­sue:

UN­BEL­IZE­ABLUE is an ori­ginal doc­u­ment­ary film pro­ject that will tell the story of an in­spir­ing group of wo­men from vari­ous walks of life who are lead­ing ef­forts to pro­tect Bel­ize’s mar­ine en­vir­on­ment and as­so­ci­ated live­li­hoods.  Bel­ize is home to one of the plan­et’s most spec­tac­u­lar mar­ine en­vir­on­ments: the world’s second largest coral reef eco­sys­tem. That sys­tem in­cludes the world fam­ous Great Blue Hole, first pop­ular­ized by Jacques Cous­teau; three unique coral atolls; and nu­mer­ous other pristine reefs. Eco­nom­ic­ally, this nat­ural her­it­age is crit­ic­ally im­port­ant to Bel­izeans, most of whom owe their live­li­hoods to the reef in some way, either through fish­ing or tour­ism.

Like other coastal coun­tries, Bel­ize’s eco­nomy re­lies heav­ily on its mar­ine re­sources. In fact, fish­ing and mar­ine-based tour­ism sus­tain the live­li­hoods of more than 50% of the coun­try’s cit­izens. Con­sequently, the equit­able use of mar­ine re­sources is of crit­ical im­port­ance to Bel­izeans, who wish their nat­ural cap­ital to be con­served and re­in­ves­ted in a sus­tain­able way.

But how can com­munit­ies thrive while co­ex­ist­ing with their nat­ural en­vir­on­ment? Where do we draw the line between prop­erty de­vel­op­ment and en­vir­on­mental pro­tec­tion? How does a coun­try choose between mass cruise ship tour­ism and eco-friendly overnight tour­ism? Who signs-off on the tradeoff between off­shore oil ex­ploit­a­tion versus a po­ten­tial nat­ural dis­aster due to oil spills along pristine reefs? These are some of the crit­ical ques­tions and chal­lenges that will be ex­plored in the film.

With re­gards to the film’s char­ac­ters, Bel­ize has the unique dis­tinc­tion that vir­tu­ally all its local and in­ter­na­tional NGOs are led by wo­men, as are key gov­ern­ment de­part­ments as­so­ci­ated with the pro­tec­tion of mar­ine re­sources. This ap­pears to be a mul­ti­gen­er­a­tional phe­nomenon where a group of wo­men pi­on­eers opened the door for the next gen­er­a­tion of fe­male con­ser­va­tion lead­ers, who are in turn boost­ing a newer gen­er­a­tion to be­gin mak­ing their voices heard.  Show­cas­ing these wo­men lead­ers and their stor­ies will be the main plot­line of UN­BEL­IZE­ABLUE.

UN­BEL­IZE­ABLUE, a doc­u­ment­ary film show­cas­ing mar­ine con­ser­va­tion in Bel­ize. The ori­ginal au­dio and foot­age re­cor­ded in March 2022 was es­sen­tial to cre­ate a 3-minute pro­duc­tion trailer that was re­leased to the pub­lic in July 2022. Since then, the pro­duc­tion trailer has be­come a crit­ical as­set to in­crease aware­ness to help pre­serve the plan­et’s oceans by pro­mot­ing cour­ageous com­munity ef­forts by wo­men lead­ers at the fore­front of mar­ine con­ser­va­tion in Bel­ize.

What's hap­pen­ing now:

Ec­lectic As­pir­a­tions LLC con­tin­ues to work on UN­BEL­IZE­ABLUE and has com­pleted two ad­di­tional film­ing trips to Bel­ize on May 7-14, 2022 and July 6-26, 2022. The ori­ginal au­dio and foot­age re­cor­ded on those trips will be used to cre­ate a 6-minute ex­ten­ded pro­duc­tion trailer. We ex­pect to start post-pro­duc­tion in the next couple of months as we work to­wards com­plet­ing the en­tire fea­ture doc­u­ment­ary film.

Trailer

What we have achieved:

The ori­ginal au­dio and foot­age re­cor­ded in March 2022 was es­sen­tial to cre­ate a 3-minute pro­duc­tion trailer that was re­leased to the pub­lic in July 2022. Since then, the pro­duc­tion trailer has be­come a crit­ical as­set to in­crease aware­ness to help pre­serve the plan­et’s oceans by pro­mot­ing cour­ageous com­munity ef­forts by wo­men lead­ers at the fore­front of mar­ine con­ser­va­tion in Bel­ize.

More in­form­a­tion:

More in­form­a­tion