Five videos focus on hunger for UN agency’s online competition

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has selected five finalists in its competition for a short video to raise public awareness about global hunger.

Last November WFP called on students and would-be filmmakers to draw attention to hunger by creating short videos that would be hosted on YouTube online. Some 70 videos were submitted from countries including Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and the United States.

A jury from the fields of film, journalism and humanitarian aid selected the finalists.

“We absolutely need the YouTube generation if we are going to get ahead of the hunger curve,” said juror and WFP’s Director of Communications and Public Policy Strategy, Nancy Roman, adding that a child dies of hunger somewhere in the world every six seconds.

The five finalists include a video of a man struggling to open a tin can without tools, a woman miming cooking a meal without food, and a well-to-do family sitting down to dinner and choosing which one of them is to eat that night.

The entrants can be seen at www.youtube.com/hungerbytes and www.wfp.org/hungerbytes.

The video which draws the most viewers by World Food Day on 16 October will win a trip for its producer to shoot a video at a relief operation operated by WFP.

Juror Edward Zwick, Director of “Blood Diamond” and “The Last Samurai,” applauded the talent represented in several entries, noting that leading submissions “not only demonstrated a strong graphic sense as well as a strong theatrical sense, they also were able to present a simple idea clearly and – perhaps just as important – with wit and power.”