DURHAM, N.C. - Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment will sponsor a new award to recognize the best environmentally themed film at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

The Nicholas School of the Environment Film Award will carry a $5,000 cash prize. It will be presented annually to the film that best depicts "the challenges we face in reconciling the human drive to improve living standards and the imperative to preserve the natural environments that sustain us and the cultural heritages that define us," said Nicholas Dean William L. Chameides.

The inaugural award, selected by a jury convened by the Nicholas School, will be presented at Full Frame's Awards Barbeque on Sunday, April 17. This year's festival will take place April 14-17 in downtown Durham.

"Documentary film is a powerful medium for communicating our profound connection to the Earth in both informative and entertaining ways, as witnessed by films as diverse as ‘Waste Land,' an award winner at last year's festival, ‘The Cove' and ‘Up the Yangtze,'" Chameides said. "We hope our award will help encourage other filmmakers to follow in their footsteps."

"We are pleased to welcome the Nicholas School to Full Frame," said festival director Deirdre Haj. "Their award will support worthy films like those we highlighted last summer in our sustainability series, and further the public's understanding of how the environment affects all of our lives."

The new award is part of the Duke Art and the Environment Initiative, launched by Chameides in 2009 to forge stronger connections between the arts, environmental sciences and policy. The initiative supports art exhibits, film showings, readings and musical and theatrical performances on environmental themes across Duke's campus. The initiative's signature program is the Duke LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts, whose winners have included actor and director Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Institute, and singer and environmental justice advocate Jackson Browne. This year's recipient will be writer Barbara Kingsolver.

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema. Each year it features showings of more than 100 films by established and emerging filmmakers, as well as panels and discussions involving filmmakers, film professionals and the public. The festival is a program of Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. For more on the festival, see www.fullframefest.org.