Nine young filmmakers from Armenia, Kiribati, Montenegro, Romania and the United States of America traveled to Amsterdam to participate in the annual OneMinutesJr. Awards and Masterclass. They represented nine of the fifteen one-minute videos nominated for the 2012 awards.
The OneMinutesJr. is an arts-based youth video initiative, produced by UNICEF and the One Minutes Foundation, that hosts video workshops for youth around the world and maintains a network of almost 3,000 youth-made films and filmmakers. Each year, the OneMinutesJr. hosts an awards competition for videos from workshops and individual youth filmmakers, offering awards in each of three categories: (Self)Portrait, Inside-Out and One Minute of Freedom.
The Inside-Out award went to ‘Ballast’ by Arthur Boksyan (15, Armenia). “Of course I’m very happy,” Arthur said after receiving his award. “It means a lot to me.” ‘Ballast’ shows the burden of the bad things he does and how he can hope to change behaviours. “It is based on a true story, and I wanted to say that true friends should always help their friends that are doing something wrong. That is the most important thing.”
