ENVIROFILM 2014 - JURY
Kateřina Javorská (Slovak Republic)
Kateřina Javorská graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava where she was studying screenwriting and dramaturgy. She was working as a dramaturg in the Slovak Television, where she focused mainly on programmes for children and youth. She made hundreds of them, the most successful include the series „Poďte s nami“ and „Od Kuka do Kuka“. Her signature can also be found on the first eco-entertaining series for children Tak i Tak. As a screenwriter she has written bedtime stories (Príbehy koníka Mateja, Novinárske rozprávky), magazines and scripts for documentaries and feature stories. Filmmaking she has been approaching also from a theoretical point of view – she organised and presented many seminars and workshops dealing with the functioning of the public television, audio-visual programmes for children and youth as well as documentaries with environmental focus. She is a member of the Slovak Syndicate of Journalists – the Film Journalists Club and the Union of Slovak Television Programme Makers (USTPM), which she had presided from 2001 to 2011. Kateřina Javorská is the holder of the Award of USTPM and the Literary Fund for a Long-term Contribution to Audiovisual Environmental Production. She teaches at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, where she runs the Department of Film Dramaturgy and Screenwriting. For the fourteenth time already she has been the member of the international jury of Envirofilm.
Steve Loveček Lichtag (Czech Republic)
Steve Lichtag, the holder of the prestigious award of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic, was born in Znojmo where he grew up in a family of a military pilot. After the graduation from the Literary and Drama Conservatoire in Brno he worked as an actor in theatres in Karlovy Vary and Jihlava and was regularly seen in film and in Czech Television programmes. In 1979 he left for the USA where he taught acting at Florida Academy of Dramatic Arts and started his cooperation with Ta Fantastika theatre.
Since 1986 Steve L. Lichtag has began wholly devoting himself to film. In 1988 he filmed an important three-part documentary Quo vadis Cambodia in South-eastern Asia and between 1989 and 1991 a six-part documentary series about gulags in then USSR, Siberia – Land of Sorrow, Land of Hope. Since 1995 he has carried out a six-part theme work Searching for Crystal World and then a famous documentary Carcharias – The Great White, which had a premiere on NBC in 2001. In 2004 he made another successful film Dance of the Blue Angels about absurd and brutal killing of whales by Japanese fishermen. The film had the world premiere at Envirofilm 2004 and has received a great public acceptance not only in the Czech Republic and Slovakia but also in the world. It has undoubtedly contributed to entry of the Czech Republic into International Whaling Committee (IWC). A screen capture Bizarre World from 2006 points to controversial legal electro fishing on Czech rivers. In the same year Steve finished the film A Myth Called Shark, in which he comes back to a great white sharks topic.
In 2002 he wrote a book called Waiting for White Death, which has become a bestseller exceptionally fast. Successful is also his second book Dance of the Blue Angels (2006).
Steve Lichtag founded the International Film Festival Water, Sea & the Oceans (2004) and is a president of Crystal Planet foundation aimed at underwater flora and fauna protection.
In 2007 he became the eighth winner of the prestigious award KANTUTA given under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Other Steve Lichtag´s successful documents include Prisoners of a White God (2008) and The Last Hunters (2010). His latest completed film up to now is 3D feature film Aldabra (an island in the western Indian Ocean), which will be distributed in 2015 by Disney Company. Currently, Steve Lichtag has been preparing another feature co-production documentary Cauldron of Life, in which he cooperates with many well-known filmmakers, namely with the Australian cinematographer David Hannan who won twice the Emmy Award. The film will have a premiere in January 2015 in Shanghai.
František Palonder (Slovak Republic)
František Palonder, after having completed the secondary school studies, was working at the Slovak Television (STV) as a camera assistant. He graduated from the VGIK Moscow Film Institute, specialization Feature and TV Film Directing (1976 – 1981). In the years to follow he was employed at STV as the film director and cooperated with Jozef Bednárik and Juraj Jakubisko as an assistant director. He continued his cooperation with STV from 1980 to 1992 as a freelance artist, director and screenwriter. From 2008 to 2010 he was working at STV as a dramaturg at the Department of Music and Entertainment and made about 500 films for the Slovak Television. For many of them he was both the screenwriter and the cinematographer. His productions cover a wide range and include movies, documentaries, musical and entertainment programmes, sport, education and children’s programmes. František Palonder is a member of the Union of Slovak Television Programme Makers (USTPM), and the Panel of the Slovak Coalition for Cultural Diversity. For the sixth time already he is the member of the International Jury of Envirofilm.
William C. Parks (USA)
William (Bill) Parks was a commercial diver for 36 years, primarily in Florida and the Bahamas. He holds a Batchelor’s Degree in Ocean Engineering and has worked extensively on beach erosion prevention and environmental projects. 
While at Florida Atlantic University he did volunteer work with marine sea turtles, moving nests out of harm’s way and rescuing stranded newborns. His diving experience includes commercial fishing, underwater videography both for documentary films and environmental exposes, underwater construction and scientific research. He was a principal participant in the development of a fishery management plan for Florida’s marine tropical fish industry, the most comprehensive of it’s kind, which has served as a model for numerous countries around the world. He served as a member of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Panel which developed environmental management regulation for the Florida Keys. He was instrumental in gaining complete protection in Florida and United States (U.S.) territorial waters for the giant Goliath Grouper (Epinephelis itajara). Additionally, together with his wife he gathered and provided to the U.S. Government crucial documentation of fishery resource abuses caused by fish traps which lead to a ban on their use in many waters of the United States. Bill worked with Dr. Samuel H. Gruber and the Bimini Biological Field Station (Sharklab) in the study of adult lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) which lead to the complete protection of this species within Florida waters. At present Bill continues to work with Dr. Gruber, with Dr. Neil Hammerschlag of the University of Miami RSMAS in the study of tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) on the Little Bahama Bank and Dr. Leonid Moroz of the University of Florida and the Florida Biodiversity Institute on groundbreaking genome sequencing research.
Ferenc Varga (Hungary)
Ferenc Varga is connected with Envirofilm from its very beginning, because as a member of the international jury he has participated in its first year already. Although he has nothing to do professionally with the world of film, he is the expert in the field of biology, geography and environmental engineering. These subjects he was studying at universities in Hungary and they became a stepping stone for his 35 years of work in the field of nature conservation. And that is why he approaches the evaluation of films in Envirofilm from the point of view of the naturalist and conservationist.
Since 1981, he has been working in various positions at the Bükk National Park Directorate. Within the Environmental Programme he participated in projects of nature, environment and landscape protection. Preparation and implementation of many international conservation projects, among them Slovak - Hungarian ones, he considers his greatest professional success. His 20-year participation in Envirofilm belongs there, too.