The Paper Boat

 The judges of One Minute to Save the World, have chosen my favourite short film as the overall winner – The Paper Boat.  The films had to be one minute long and the idea was initially proposed by Wecan (Climate Action Now) of which I am a founding member. The paper boat is a really poignant film showing a little boy moving a paper boat through the sky and dragging it along the parched earth as there is no water to sail it on.  My Paper Boat was made in India, by Arun Bose who is from the state of Kerala. He has been making films based on various tribes and gypsy communities in India, and was responsible for a documentary,  “Not a Drop of Rain” about  100 years of drought in the districts on Kalahandi and Naupada in the State of Orissa. He says the key concept of the winning one minute film came from that documentary which showed him the suffering of tribes  that got displaced from their native lands as result of repeated droughts.  I was involved in the second round of judging before the short listed films went to judges incuding, Bruce Parry, the director of The Age of Stupid, Franny Armstrong, head of the British Film Council, Satwant Gill and writer Mark Lynas. The shortlisted films are on the 1minute website.  Some are brilliant - there are categories for under 18s, professionals, companies and amateurs. There is also a viral category that has a film of a talking cat that is getting a huge amount of hits on youtube.