Press Release

UNDP Comunications Office

UNDP Plays a Leading Role at UN Documentary Film Festival

New York, 26 April 2007 - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shined brightly at the Third Annual United Nations Documentary Film Festival in New York on Saturday, winning top honors in the short-film category and seeing a feature film highlighting a UNDP partnership with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) take the prize for best UN feature.

The winning short, “Kibera - Human Development”, is a portrayal of the disturbing deprivations of clean water and sanitation in Kibera, a Kenyan slum in which six of ten infants die of waterborne disease before the age of 18 months. The film was produced in support of UNDP’s 2006 Human Development Report, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis.  

“Film can be a highly effective medium for advocacy across the globe,” said UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervi?.“I am pleased to see that UNDP’s voice is being heard on important issues that affect us all.”

The feature winner, “Invaders from the Sea”, produced by the IMO with support from the British Broadcasting Company, the shipping industry and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, shows how harmful organisms carried in the ballast water of ships have wreaked biological and economic havoc around the world, largely due to growing maritime trade and traffic over the last few decades. Since 1998, UNDP, with funding from the Global Environment Facility, has been working with IMO on the GloBallast programme (globallast.imo.org), an innovative programme that helps developing countries address this issue, one of the top threats to global marine and freshwater ecosystems along with pollution, overfishing and habitat loss.

The winners were chosen from among 31 finalists, out of an original pool of more than 200 entries screened at the Festival. All entrants were required to reflect one or more of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a set of concrete objectives for global development progress to be achieved by 2015. The finalists were selected by a screening committee of UN officials, representatives from the Media Communications Association International (MCAI), faculty members of the New School university in New York, which hosted the event, and experts from the Mount Sinai Global Health Center. Winners were chosen based on topical relevance, artistic merit and production values.