Democracy Video Challenge: Ethiopian Semifinalist
Last Thursday, the United States Embassy announced three Ethiopian semifinalists for the Democracy Video Challenge, an annual competition sponsored by YouTube and the U.S. State Department. Short videos completing the phrase “Democracy is…” are submitted from across the globe. The Ethiopian semi-finalists’ films will be submitted to the continent-wide competition. Global winners will be voted by the YouTube audience in May. Last year, the first year of the completion, no entries from Ethiopia were submitted. The U.S. Embassy was eager to change that this year.
I helped by running a workshop on the competition in November. In information sessions, the embassy identified concerns on the part of local filmmakers about delivering a powerful message in three minutes, as the competition required, and competing with the work from countries well practices in sophisticated film and animation techniques. I attempted to address these concerns by analyzing past competition winners and sharing examples of techniques for quickly communicating abstract ideas through film. The results were stunning. 30 entries were submitted, making the Ethiopian selection among of the most competitive in Africa.
Here are the semi-finalist films: (See all the entries from Ethiopia here.)
Democracy is Fair Play by Yared Shumete
Update May 23, 2010: This video has made it to the final round of the competition! Your votes decide the winners. Vote for Yared Shumete’s video here. Voting is open until June 15th, 2010.
Dire Dawa by Brook Zarai Mengistu
Fahrenheit 212 by Michael Tamire
I personally Love the first Video [Democracy is fair play] and think that it is the only one of the three that told a story capable of nicely completing the “Democracy is …” sentence. I do appreciate the thought that was put in to making the animation video(the last one). I thought it was fun to watch and made a really good point to motivate people to become a part of a democratic system that is already in place by voting. But, to me, it still comes short of answering what democracy is or should be.
The video submitted by Yared tells a wonderful story using a childhood game anyone raised in Ethiopia can relate to. The way the losing side concedes and carries the other boy until it is his turn is a nice comparison to what it is like to lose an election. The joy on his face after he hits the other stone with his own and finds his place on top is a show for what it is like see the rule of fair play triumph . The other interesting point made in this video is that, it takes two to make this ‘game’ happen. Even though you are on the ‘losing’ side and carrying another on your back you still are very important for the game, with out you or someone like you it cannot happen. This video keeps on making me think long after after i watched and that is why i wanted to say something about it here too.I think its really well done. It clearly is thought provoking …b/c my friends and i had an interesting conversation after watching it on youtube a few weeks ago.
In reality things do not usually work out this neatly and this is a simple look at what we envision and hope for when we think about democracy be it in Ethiopia or anywhere in the world. One can only say so much in less than 2 minutes.:) But still Yared’s video has managed, in my opinion, to show us a core element of democracy by using a very simple Ethiopian story. His capacity to look to the simple things in life to tell such a profound story is what makes his Video the best! : )