21 September 2009
Democracy Video Challenge Launches Second Annual Competition
Citizens around the world invited to share their views on democracy
Washington — Who knew the topic of democracy could spark the imagination of the world’s YouTube generation?
It did. And the partners who sponsored the 2009 Democracy Video Challenge have decided to do it again in 2010.
The Democracy Video Challenge is a unique partnership comprised of democracy and youth organizations, the film and entertainment industry, academia and the U.S. government. In its inaugural year, the challenge attracted more than 900 video entries from 95 countries. The 2009 winners were selected (as those for 2010 will be) from every region of the world: sub-Saharan Africa; East Asia and the Pacific; Europe; the Near East and North Africa; South and Central Asia; and the Western Hemisphere.
The video platform is provided by YouTube and the winning videos are selected by a panel of film industry professionals and global online voting. The videos and biographies of the six 2009 winners can be seen at http://www.videochallenge.america.gov/video.html.
The challenge is this: Create a video no longer than three minutes in length that completes the phrase “Democracy is … .”
Six regional winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, New York and Hollywood to attend gala screenings of the winning videos; meet with government, media and civil society leaders; and get exposure to the U.S. film and television industries.
GREAT THOUGHTS CAN BE EXPRESSED WITH SIMPLEST TOOLS
The winners of the 2009 contest shared some of their thoughts in Web chats with worldwide participants in recent weeks and discussed how even the simplest resources can be used to express serious ideas.
Anna Israel of Brazil created a film that featured different body parts of a single actress — her 13-year-old sister — to symbolize different elements of democracy. That approach, Israel confessed, was due in part to her lack of resources to make the video, but it worked out well in illustrating how different people in a democratic society want different things.
Chansa Tembo of Zambia acknowledged the difficulty of assembling resources to make a video in his homeland. But since he lives on a farm, he was able to use fruit grown there along with a blender to illustrate democracy in his “smoothie” video.
“I started to relate the different shapes of fruit, the different sizes and attributes to how we as people differ, and come from different countries, are of different races, creeds and religions,” Tembo said. “Democracy is not new to Africa. It has existed in many different cultures and traditions where the views of society were expressed freely, through various mediums such as music, dance and different types of art. The concept of multiparty democracy is relatively new to Africa, though.”
Rodin Hamidi of the United Arab Emirates used a man planting a tree in the desert to represent open-minded people. The children who pulled it up, he said, are a symbol of “game players who uproot all good things planted by … people who care about democracy and freedom.” Democracy, he said, is “a process that enables us to have human rights.”
Tsering Choden of Nepal, who used a number of crowded street scenes in her video, said the “people’s movements” in her country were her inspiration for her video. Nepal, she said, is “a fledgling democracy.”
“The step towards democracy has begun, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” Choden said. “Sometimes politics comes in the way of democracy, and that’s what’s happening right now.”
Aissa Peñafiel of the Philippines used a single actor whose body was inscribed with messages. Her video was considered to be one of the “darker” themed entries. Peñafiel said that “democracy will never be successful in a sleeping populace; if we want this to change we should all practice critical thinking and be fearless about exploring the things that we rarely dare to look at.”
Lukasz Szozda of Poland produced an animated film that was perhaps the most cheerful and upbeat of the winners. “I wanted to show the positive aspects and ideas of democracy,” he said. “I think it’s good we were able to win democracy in Poland after all [the] years of communism; and even though it might not be perfect, it is still better than it was before.”
During her September 18 meeting with the challenge winners in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “We need to think of democracy as promoting transparent and effective governments that protect their citizens, provide help to those in need, and deliver results, which is one of the biggest challenges facing democracies everywhere. Democracy creates the conditions that bring people together to negotiate solutions to their own problems, the ones facing their country, and indeed, our world.”
Democracy, Clinton said, is built across generations. “And frankly, we wanted to engage young people in a candid and open discussion,” she said. “Then we wanted to stand back and see what we have heard and what we could see really working in the ideas and the thoughts of young people across the world.”
To learn more, see: Democracy Has a New Challenge.
