News
- The We Are Water Foundation is continuing with its commitment to audiovisual creation in order to raise awareness and create a new culture of water.
- The subject matter of the We Art Water Festival is based on World Water Day 2012: "Water and Food Security".
- The call for entries has been made through the 150 best film schools in the world, from 56 countries spread across the five continents.
- The prize-winners will win a trip to one of the countries in which the Foundation undertakes cooperation projects to film a documentary.
- The UN supports the Festival through its agency in Brussels.
For a new culture of water through audiovisual art
The We Art Water Film Festival is an initiative of the We Are Water Foundation with the aim of recognising and rewarding the talent of those people who with a clear sensitivity towards the problem of water are able to express it in audiovisual works.
The inscription deadline for the works is the 30 April 2012 and the finalist works will be shown on the We Are Water website and in the Roca Galleries before the final awarding of the prizes in June.
The We Art Water Film Festival has been founded from the philosophy that since its beginnings the We Are Water Foundation has developed for raising awareness about the problems of access to drinking water present throughout the world. The Foundation has always believed in the power of artistic expression as a means of communication and awareness-raising of solidarity messages and it now wants to take a step further forward with the creation of an innovative film festival on the subject of the problem of hydric resources that achieves a high level of participation and dissemination.
Water and Food Security: subject matter for this first edition of the festival.
The subject matter of the short films is based on Water and Food Security, the subject chosen by the UN for World Water Day 2012, which is held every 22 March, a worldwide event that aims to warn about the importance of fresh water and advocates sustainable management of hydric resources. The subject chosen for 2012, Water and Food Security, aims to take an in-depth look at these two so closely-related concepts and the deficiencies of which are causing serious crises in increasingly more areas of the world. This is a problem the seriousness of which can be explained with a simple figure: between 2,500 and 5,000 litres of water are needed to produce the food that one person needs daily and, today, this amount is not guaranteed.
Moreover, according to official data, there are currently 7,000 million people that need feeding on the planet and the forecast is that there will be another 2,000 million by 2050. The statistics show that everyone drinks between 2 and 4 litres of water per day. However, the main part of the water we "drink" is incorporated into the food we eat: producing 1 kilo of beef, for example, consumes 15,000 litres of water, and 1 kilo of wheat "drinks" 1,500 litres. The problem is therefore serious and requires immediate action and, above all, the maximum raising of awareness of the world population.
An international calling open to the public with special emphasis on new filmmakers.
It is in this context in which the main objective of this first edition of the We Art Water Film Festival is framed: to create renown and awareness among the population about the problem of water in the world and its relation to food security, through the creation of audiovisual works that deal with this question.
The audiovisual pieces presented must deal with and be produced expressly for the festival in three possible categories: micro-documentary, animation and video made with mobile phone. The competition is open to everyone who wants to take part and is aged 18 or over, although the call for entries has been chiefly made through the 150 top film schools in the world, in 56 countries spread around the 5 continents. Inscriptions for the competition can be made until the 30 April 2012. According to the planned deadlines, the selection of the finalists will be made public in May, and the prizes awarded in June 2012.
Four prizes will be awarded; one per category, that the jury will give, and another that will reflect the votes of the public via the We Are Water website. The prize-winners will win a trip to one of the countries in which the Foundation undertakes cooperation projects to film a documentary (See projects); they will receive a grant to take a Master's Degree in Documentary and Society given by the ESCAC (Higher School of Cinema and Audiovisual Art of Catalonia); and they will receive audiovisual material and have the chance to attend the shooting of the next film by Isabel Coixet.
The We Art Water Film Festival aims to open its doors to new creators who understand the importance of drinking water in the world. With this the Foundation is taking another step forward along the path of audiovisual communication in the field of solidarity by proposing the open and direct involvement and encouraging the active participation of the general public with the aim of obtaining multiple audiovisual interpretations of the subject matter.
According to Xavier Torras, director of the We Are Water Foundation and member of the jury, the Festival is an incentive for raising awareness: "With this initiative we are offering everyone with a clear awareness of the problem of water in the world the opportunity to express themselves through audiovisual art and publicise their works, with a subject matter that goes beyond any culture and has a strong social interest. Moreover, we at the We Are Water Foundation believe that this international festival of short films will help disseminate the importance of good water management, through previously unseen and original pieces of work".
The jury for this first We Art Water Film Festival will be made up of, as well as Isabel Coixet as President, diverse figures from the film and cooperation world, such as the film director and writer Ray Loriga, the actress and singer María de Medeiros, Antonio Saura, council member of the European Film Academy and Carlos Jiménez Renjifo, Desk Officer for Spain of the Regional United Nations Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC); Toni Ulled, director of the magazine Fotogramas and Xavier Torras, director of the We Are Water Foundation.
Isabel Coixet has praised the Foundation's decision which she considers a great incentive in order to obtain artistic contents with value for disseminating the problem of water: "It is very interesting that it is the We Are Water Foundation itself that is promoting a specific subject for the Festival" the filmmaker has stated, "This way filmmakers will have to get involved and give their point of view about a very specific problem such as water and food security. We are looking for a mixture between the didactic and the artistic".
Support from the UN
The We Art Water Film Festival has the support of different organisations, such as the United Nations, through its Brussels agency UNRIC (United Nations Regional Information Centre) (see web) which is the regional centre of the United Nations for Western Europe. Afsane Bassir Pour, its director, has stated: "Through initiatives like the We Art Water Film Festival, we want to show world leaders, during the Rio+20 congress, what type of future the people want. We need "artivists", activist artists who help us spread the message about the importance of water in the world, not with big words but simply with images".
About the We Are Water Foundation
The We Are Water Foundation, promoted by the Roca company, aims, on the one hand, to raise awareness among the general public and the administrations about the need to encourage a new culture of water in the world and, on the other hand, to alleviate the negative effects relating to the lack of hydric resources, through the development of cooperation and support projects alongside diverse organisations such as Education without Frontiers, the Vicente Ferrer Foundation, Intermon Oxfam and Unicef.
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