Schoolchildren brought a new twist to the island’s growing reputation for film-making with a special screening and prize presentation for the first ‘It’s Not Fair!’ One World Primary Film Competition.
Children aged from five to 11 had been challenged to produce a film of no more than four minutes exploring the idea of It’s Not Fair in a global context.
They were free to interpret this in any way they liked and to use any film techniques. The resulting six films which got through to the finals were, in the words of the judges, ‘inspirational and simply amazing’, covering subjects as diverse as global poverty, deforestation and child soldiers.
They also used an array of film techniques including stop motion animation, green screen filming and homemade soundtracks.
The movies were played to an excited audience in the Manx Museum which included the Lieutenant Governor Adam Wood and the Department of Education Chief Executive Stuart Dobson as well as many of the young film-makers, their teachers and parents.
The overall winner was Sulby School for a film that contrasted the lives of children in the Isle of Man with others in developing countries.
Other awards were given for Best Emotional Impact (Braddan for a film about child soldiers), Best Soundtrack (Foxdale), Best Costume (Michael), Best Call to Action (Onchan) and Best Animation (St Thomas’, Douglas). Sulby also won Most Informative.
The event was created by One World Centre director Rosemary Clarke, who said: ‘We wanted to provide a fun and creative way for children to explore subjects which are by their nature very serious.
‘The fabulous response to the film competition shows that children were able to understand how unfair life can be for others and also find very different ways of illustrating this and grabbing our attention. Each school introduced their film in person and it was clear they learned a lot from the film-making process, as well as studying their chosen topics.
‘We are indebted to Sure for their sponsorship of this event. We also received a lot of help from Christy De Haven and Dave Armstrong at MannIN Shorts who gave technical advice and are also providing a film workshop for the winning school.
‘This is the first in what we hope will be a regular annual event for primary schools and has set the standard very high.
‘We’re really looking forward to what the children will produce next year.’
