NEWS: The One Minutes Jr. featured at GIFF in the USA

From the start, festival organizers said they didn't just want to show great movies. They also wanted to use the event to shed light on social issues. The festival partnered with UNICEF and showed short films from the organization's OneMinutesJr. program, in which children from around the world are able to make mini-films about their lives and circumstances.

A panel on social impact films is scheduled for Sunday at 11 a.m. in the Cole Auditorium.

"This is the most prestigious event of the festival," festival COO Ginger Stickel said of the gala. "Both Harry Belafonte and Mia Farrow have been tremendous humanitarians and they have both used film to serve the greater good. They've used their star power for the betterment of society."

Stickel pledged the Changemaker Gala would be a part of the film festival next year and in future years, a promise Stapleton Reyes was quick to echo.

"This is part of the heart of what we're trying to do at the Greenwich International Film Festival," she said.

UNICEF executives Casey Rotter and Barron Segar said they were thrilled with how the partnership with the festival had gone.

"We always want to figure out a way to partner with the entertainment industry because there's so much they can offer by telling people's stories and amplifying the voice we have for kids through our work," said Rotter, director and founder of UNICEF's Next Generation initiative. "It's been wonderful and it's so exciting to be celebrating Harry Belafonte and Mia Farrow tonight, two of our most dedicated UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors."

Segar, senior vice president of development for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, said he returned from Zambia two weeks ago and saw first-hand how the OneMinutesJr. project was having an effect; how kids were using the film equipment given them to document the impact of climate change on their lives.

"It's great to be able to harness the power of film to better the lives of children," he said. "Tonight gives us a great audience to get our message out and to get people thinking about children."

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Source: http://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Harry-Belafonte-honored-at-Greenwich-film-festival-6311758.php

ARTICLES: Meeting Youth Around the World - the OneMinutesJr

"I’ve been coordinating the global OneMinutesJr. initiative since 2007. The project is an arts-based video initiative that seeks to capture the voices and expressions of youth on issues and subjects important to them. These viewpoints are captured in one-minute videos that are then shared through a multitude of platforms.

In the past six years with the OneMinutesJr., I have met over 450 different youth around the world. There is no one “profile” for the young people that participate in UNICEF’s arts-based one-minute video project. But this uniqueness means that each workshop is a new experience, a chance to meet another diverse group of children."

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WORKSHOPS / TRAINING / ONEMINUTESJR: Young offenders and victims of violence against children cooperate in video story-telling workshop in Baku

BAKU, 9 March 2012 - Fifteen children and teenagers came together this week in the capital of Azerbaijan to share their stories on juvenile justice and violence against children in a OneMinutesJr video workshop. The 5-day training is part of a wider project to end torture and ill treatment of children, supported by the European Union in partnership with UNICEF.

In cooperation with the NGO Reliable Future, the Psycho-Social Rehabilitation Center in Baku and the One Minutes Foundation, UNICEF Azerbaijan invited young offenders as well as children who have been victims of violence to attend the workshop. The aim of the 5-day training was to develop one-minute videos written, filmed and produced by the young participants, showing their personal views of their experiences around the topics "children in conflict with the law" and "violence against children".

During the first two days of the training, the children spent most of the time developing their stories with the OneMinutesJr facilitators from Russia, Georgia and Germany. The topics of the workshop, experencies of both young offenders and children who are victims of violence, demanded a very sensitive approach.

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NEWS / WORKSHOPS / ONEMINUTESJR: OneMinutesJr workshop in Bulgaria - Daily Diary, Part I

OneMinutesJr workshop in Bulgaria - Day 1

STARA ZAGORA, Bulgaria, August 29, 2011 - Fifteen boys and girls from a Roma neighborhood in Stara Zagora have come together this week to produce OneMinutesJr videos on their lives and their future.

In the next five days, the youngsters aged 9 to 14 will become producers, actors/actresses, cameramen/camerawomen and will produce their own personal messages in form of short videos. The workshop takes place in the Roma mahalla Losinets in the Northwest of Stara Zagora, the sixth biggest city in Bulgaria.

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ARTICLES / PROJECTS: OneMinutesJr. initiative helps youth capture their viewpoints around the world

The OneMinutesJr is a youth arts initiative that teaches young people how to capture their viewpoints on video. The project, run by UNICEF and its partner The One Minutes Foundation, has been producing one minute videos since 2002. Click here for more information about the project.

By Karen Cirillo

NEW YORK, USA, 19 August 2011 - June and July were busy months for UNICEF’s oneminutesjr. initiative: Five youth video workshops took place in the USA, Haiti, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Germany, with artists teaching young people about video techniques and storytelling.

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OneMinutesJr playlist

ICDB: Free materials available for broadcasters

UNICEF has collected a variety of audio and video materials that broadcasters may want to use for your ICDB broadcasts. All materials are free of charge for usage on 6 March 2011 and available on our digital media site for download.

The collection includes audio diaries produced by young reporters, a selection of oneminutesjr. videos, short form video pieces on girls' opinions in Syria and Liberia and a selection of animation Meena and Sara episodes.

If you would like to receive the link to download these materials, please email kcirillo@unicef.org

NEWS / OneMinutesJr: Lao teenagers get first taste of video making at OneMinutesJr workshop

Luangprabang, Lao PDR: December, 2010: Fifteen short films – each exactly one minute long – were the outcome of a workshop in this picturesque Lao town that gave a group of Lao teenagers a unique opportunity to try their hand at digital video production.

The workshop was the latest collaboration between the Netherlands-based One MinutesJr Foundation and UNICEF through which – since 2004 -- youth in over 80 countries have had the chance to unleash their creativity onscreen.

Stories about a stranded tuk tuk driver, a gilded puppet, and a young boy dreaming of running his own computer shop were among the finished films. Buddhist monks, a maker of traditional instruments and an animated family portrait also featured in the video productions which drew high praise for their creativity and technique.

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OneMinutesJ workshop in Macedonia 2010

NEWS / AWARDS / ONEMINUTESJR: Youth filmmakers nominated for awards

NEW YORK/AMSTERDAM, 21 October 2010 – UNICEF and the One Minutes Foundation announced last week the nominees for the 2010 Oneminutesjr. Awards. The awards will go to the best one minute video made by a youth filmmaker in the past year. The awards will be announced online at www.theoneminutesjr.org on Wednesday, November 10.

There are three categories for competition: (Self)-Portrait, Inside-Out and One Minute of Freedom.

The films nominated for (Self)-Portrait are “Mama” by Wolf Artem (Ukraine), “Dear Dad” by Carlon Knight (Antigua), “Let the Past be the Past” by Swaba Tumusiime (Uganda), “The Gap” by Chris Ndamagye (Uganda) and “Greetings from Kosovo” by Suada Jahirovic (Kosovo).

The films nominated for Inside-out are “Taim Nogut” by Louisah Enos (Papua New Guinea), “Pride” by Jesse Russell (USA), “Paper Wings” by Nargiz Zeynalova (Azerbaijan), “Welcome” by Nikita Wade (Barbados) and “I Am Alone Now” by Ruth Henry (Barbados).

The films nominated for One Minute of Freedom are “Focus” by Ryan Forde (Guyana), “Hanoi Night” by Nguyen The Ngec Hà (Vietnam), “Wailea River” by Epironi Silimanabure Tulele (Fiji), “It Happened to Me” by Melania Dikoulia (Fiji) and “On the Last Drop” by Tolib Homitov (Tajikistan).

All videos were made by filmmakers under the age of 20.

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AWARDS: Winners of DokuFest 2010 in Prizren, Kosovo, announced

Prizren, Kosovo, August 8, 2010 – DokuFest announced the winners of the 9th edition of the festival at the awards ceremony held last night, culminating the 8 day long festival activities that included the screenings of 198 films representing 37 countries, workshops, debates, panel discussions and live music concerts. Festival hosted more than 170 filmmakers from around the globe, making it truly international event.

The Balkan Documentary Competition Award went to Romanian film The World According to Ion.B. by Alexander Nanau. The jury composed of Emel Celebi (Turkey) Mike Palmieri (USA) and Sissi Korhonen (Finland) noted the following about the competition and awarded films:

“The Balkan Documentary competition films were all connected by their shared examinations of traditional values of family and place vs personal values that break with those traditions. Sometimes the characters in the films illustrated the break, other times by the unique craft of the filmmaking itself. The jury felt strongly about three films that managed to explore these themes in unique and special ways.
The jury awards its main prize to a director whose filmmaking skill merges seamlessly with the character he portrays, leaving no opportunity wasted in the telling of his story. It is a deeply intimate portrait told with a grace and humor that won us over unanimously”

Same jury also gave the Best Newcomer Award to two films from Balkan Documentary Competition. The winning films were 1717 Kilometers of Summer 2009 by Slovenian filmmaker Jurij Meden and Tobacco Girl by Macedonian Biljana Garvanlieva. Balkan Documentary Centre from Sofia, Bulgaria sponsored the award.

“The emerging Balkan filmmaker prize is shared between two filmmakers whose approach to their subjects could not be more different from one another, but whose films conveyed a powerful sense of character and place that left a lasting impression on us” the jury noted.

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DokuKids award went to Finnish animation Benigni by Elli Vuorinen and Sorra Prize to the short documentary Greetings from Kosovo by Suada Jahirovic from Kosovo.

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OneMinutesJr workshop in Kosovo - Daily Diary

ARTICLES / PROJECTS: A chance to bring stories out of the rural areas (AFRICA)

Eight hours west of Lusaka in the rural town of Mongu, Zambia, about 2 500 children come together to watch World Cup soccer on huge screens while being intermittently interviewed by local student reporters.

Further north on the continent, in Gisenyi, Rwanda, young reporters put on "radio shows" -- during half-time in a field set up with TV screens -- to discuss the merits of a good education.

This all forms part of the "World Cup in My Village" programme, which brings youths together to not only enjoy the World Cup -- a luxury to most in these impoverished areas -- but more importantly to address pressing issues in their communities.

full article

OneMinutesJr workshop on HIV/AIDS in Ukraine

15 teenagers from different regions in Ukraine have gathered in the UN House in Kyiv this morning to start a five-day project that might change their lives and the attitudes of many other people. They all are directly or indirectly affected by HIV/AIDS and will produce 15 short videos, the OneMinutesJr, over the course of this week.

Yukie Mokuo, the UNICEF Representative in Ukraine, welcomes the participants of the workshop and tells them about a similar workshop held in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk last year, where children of the same age successfully produced a series of videos on children's rights. "The films are so powerful", Mrs Mokuo says, "that we plan to have the films that you create this week shown at a huge international conference on HIV/AIDS in Vienna next month. And we will definitely also use them in November in a national conference on the same topic here in Ukraine."

More motivation comes from the fact that the films will all go live on the project website www.theoneminutesjr.org and that all participants are automatically registered for the annual OneMinutesJr award.

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WORKSHOPS: OneMinutesJr workshop on water issues in Tajikistan

Follow the blog!

Day One - http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/reallives_14455.html
Day Two - http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/reallives_14456.html
Day Three - http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/reallives_14457.html

and two more to go...

WORKSHOPS / EVENTS: OneMinutesJr workshop in Kosovo - Day 2

The second day of the OneMinutesJr workshop in Mitrovica, Kosovo, starts with more discussions and brainstorming about the film ideas. We then give the children a quick introduction to the cameras and hand over the equipment to the children. It is important that they "experiment" with the cameras and get comfortable using them, because over the next two days, they will run the process and become directors and cameramen.

Interestingly, the smallest boys show the biggest interest in the cameras. It seems like Sultan (13) and his brother Mewruz (12) have glued them to their hands. But all others also want to have a go and so the cameras are handed over from one participant to the other.

English blog - Day 2

Der zweite Tag des OneMinutesJr-Workshops mit Roma-Kindern in Mitrovica, Kosovo, beginnt da, wo wir am ersten Tag aufgehört haben - mit weiteren Disussionen über die Filmideen, noch mehr “brainstorming” und der Fertigstellung der Dreh-Skizzen. Danach geben wir den Kindern eine kurze Einführung in die Theorie und Praxis der “Drehkunst”. Wann benutzt man einen Zoom? Was ist überhaupt ein Kameraschwenk? Wieviele verschiedene Bilder bzw. Einstellungen braucht man für einen OneMinutesJr-Film eigentlich? Ausserdem: Wie bekomme ich das beste Licht für meinen Film, wo muß die Sonne stehen, was passiert, wenn die Batterien leer sind. Die einfachen Dinge des Alltags eines “Kamera-Kindes” wollen eben gelernt sein.

German blog- Day 2

OneMinutesJr workshop in Suva, Fiji - Day Three

Fiji, 20 January 2010 - At 9 a.m. sharp, the third day of the OneMinutesJr workshop starts in Namadi Heights, a suburb of Suva, the capital of Fiji. There is a long list of videos that need to be filmed today. Planning the schedule is the first thing we need to do and therefore we group the workshop participants by film topic and locations.

Three films can be done right here at the workshop venue since we only need "neutral" backgrounds and no special locations. Also, for these films we need a lot of actors and it is necessary to keep the whole group together for this reason. The filming does not take too long and then we are off in groups.

David accompanies Naca (18) and Manoq (17) to a jail and a small village. They want to film their personal stories there, one is about juvenile justice and the other one about child abuse. At the same time, another group is taken by the second trainer to a home for disabled children and to a local hospital.

Junior (15) is wondering why he hardly ever sees disabled children in Suva. He has made some investigations and contacted a special school for disabled children. We go there and talk to the children, trying to find out how they live, what their dreams are and what they miss.

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OneMinutesJr workshop in Suva, Fiji - Day Two

Fiji, 19 January 2010 - On the morning of the second day of the OneMinutesJr workshop in Fiji's capital Suva, we do another round of one-on-one interviews with the participants.

The story ideas need to be finalized and transformed into concrete images. For now, these images exist on paper only as little sketches, but they will soon be turned into real moving images that will then be edited into 60-second videos.

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AWARDS / OneMinutesJr: Child-rights video contest winner focuses on the right to education

NEW YORK, USA, 20 November 2009 – A young girl in India longs to be in school. She watches through the window and the gracious teacher calls her in. But when she sits down, the boys shift over to one side to be away from her.

VIDEO: Watch now

This is the premise of ‘The Classroom’, the winner of the UNICEF youth video contest marking the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

As the one-minute video progresses, more and more girls join the first girl’s side, until the classroom is full of both boy and girl students doing their lessons.

Worldwide submissions

Created by Sonu Thakur, 15, of West Bengal, India, the video is a simple yet beautiful way of illustrating Article 28 of the CRC, which states that every child has the right to an education. It also illustrates one of UNICEF’s top priorities – getting more girls in school.

The video contest, which drew over 135 videos from around the world, asked young filmmakers to produce one-minute videos expressing what child rights mean to them. Judges selected 12 finalists, representing India, Colombia, Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Romania.

The finalists were judged by a panel of youth video makers and activists, and adult media professionals.

Besides organizing the contest in connection with the 20th anniversary of the CRC, UNICEF ran ‘OneminutesJr’ workshops in 11 countries under the child-rights theme. Operated in partnership with the One Minutes Foundation and the European Cultural Foundation, the ‘OneminutesJr’ project organizes five-day film workshops in which each participant learns camera skills, story development and production techniques.

The CRC-related workshops resulted in the production of video by young people in Senegal, Bangladesh, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, Niger, Ukraine, Barbados, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Trinidad, Antigua, Guyana, Moldova, Mongolia and Viet Nam.

The videos from these workshops are currently featured on the CRC 20th anniversary website.

OneMinutesJr video workshop in Papua New Guinea - Day 5

The final day of the OneMinutesJr workshop in Port Moresby has arrived. Hard to believe that it has already been five days since we started working with the teenagers here in the YWCA office in "Mosbi" as Port Moresby is called in Pidgin English.

The day has a very simple structure: Get ready before 5 PM! Many of the films still need a voice-over or subtitles. There is music to be chosen, the teenagers sing songs and for one film they even write their very own song in the morning. The computer room has been turned into the "audio studio". It is by far the most quiet room in the building so it is here where we capture the voice-overs with the cameras.

The trainers have almost worked through the night to get the rough edits on the way and now it is all about putting the last touches on the films. Names and titles have to be added, certificates of participation need to be filled in and so time flies by and the big moment of the final presentation comes almost unexpectedly in the afternoon.

The screening of all 15 videos the children produced this week is - as always - quite an event. Their parents have come to watch the films, the YWCA staff is there and UNICEF staff members from different programmes have also come to see what the children came up with.

The result is a stunning display of creativity, but it is also a mirror image of childhood in PNG, which is not always just happiness and joy. A lot of problems remain for young people in the country - violence, neglect, gender problems, etc - and the OneMinutesJr films we produced here should not be seen as remedy but rather a method of showing the symptoms. Getting the right help that is needed is not in the hands of the children in most cases, but when they work together with the adult, there will be ways of improving the lives of the children in PNG.

Port Moresby, PNG - November 20, 2009 - Chris Schuepp

OneMinutesJr video workshop in Papua New Guinea - Day 4

--Two days remain at this exciting OneMinutesJr workshop in Port Moresby. Not "two days" but "two years" is the title of the first film that is completely finished. Paul's film about his two-year prison sentence is filmed, edited and already has its voice-over.

But there are still four participants who have not started with their films and so we are out with the cameras again today. Sindy (16) is first with her film about a girl who does not do what her mother tells her to do. The argument ends with the mother beating the girl and chasing her out of the house. The girl flees to her best friend, but the mother in the end finds her and apologizes.

In the afternoon, we are off to two different settlements on the outskirts of the capital Port Moresby. Ephraim's secondary school is near the first settlements and the little children from around there always exchange empty plastic bottles for biscuits in his school So Ephraim wants to use this opportunity to tell the world more about the lives of these underprivileged children who live in the streets near his school.

Next is Junior (17) and his story about alcohol abuse in his neighborhood. We are out in the streets filming a scene at a local store when more and more people, children and adults, gather to watch the filming. They are all very interested in what is going on, ask questions and make comments and give suggestions. When Paul (17) gives the final "action" sign and Wesley (14) pushes the record button for the last time, there are at least 100 people out to witness the film-making process in Kila Kila village.

Before the sun sets, Louisah (14) is the last participant to finish her film. She has told us that at one point she considered committing suicide because her parents are always fighting. But fortunately she did not go all the way and reconsidered her decision. She is a happier girl now, and with her film she wants to make a stand against teenage suicide and give others new hope.

Port Moresby, PNG - November 19, 2009 - Chris Schuepp