New York Film Festival Award For Habitat for Humanity PSA
International housing charity Habitat for Humanity has won the award for Best Public Service Announcement at the New York Film Festival.
The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (NYIIFVF) is the largest film festival in the world. Festival organizers said: “This short animation will revolutionize the look of Public Service Announcements. It is an innovative creative piece that you can watch over and over again, with the ability to adapt to any countries, mixing the animation techniques with the 3-D world.”
“We are thrilled to have won such a prestigious award,” says Tom Price, Habitat for Humanity’s Director of Communications, Western Europe. “We are adapting the PSA for broadcast all around the world.”
The animation is currently running on 7 television channels in the UK. Habitat for Humanity Portugal and Netherlands are currently recording Portugese and Dutch voiceovers onto the PSA for use in their countries, and the Latin American / Carribean and Asia Pacific regions will soon be adding their own voiceover onto the animation for use in their areas.
The PSA tells the story of a young girl living in poverty housing who wishes that everyone has a simple, decent place to live. She mobilizes the community to help each other build, and her dream comes true all around the world.
“We used animation so that we could record a different voiceover when we wanted the piece to be used in different cultures or countries,” says Price.
The style was influenced by a global variety of children’s drawings. It incorporates a multi-visual approach that uses both traditional and modern animation techniques combining 3D computer animation with 2D linear drawings to create a truly unique style and feel. In using this style of animation, we believe that we have broken fresh ground in using a non-traditional medium to transmit a charity message.
Three of the animators from RJDM Animations who worked on the PSA are graduates from the NCCA National Centre for Computer Animation. The child’s voice is Filipa Malo Franco, who was the voice of Lilo in Disney’s Portuguese version of Lilo and Stitch.
Habitat for Humanity is a nondenominational Christian housing charity that builds homes for families living in poverty or slum housing. In fact, we build a house every 26 minutes. To date we have built 150,000 homes in more than 80 countries. Habitat for Humanity hopes that showing our PSA will help to raise awareness not only of our organisation, but also of the issue of poverty housing around the world.
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Notes to editors below
For more information or still images of the PSA, please contact Tom Price at Habitat for Humanity on telephone 0151 280 44850151 280 4485 or [email protected] or Judy Bottomley on telephone 01295 220 18501295 220 185 or [email protected]. You can also visit our website at http://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity International is a nondenominational Christian charity dedicated to eliminating poverty housing worldwide. We work around the world with volunteers from all backgrounds, races and religions to build homes together with families in need. Since we were established in 1976, Habitat for Humanity International has built over 150,000 homes, giving 750,000 people a simple, decent place to live. Habitat for Humanity is active in more than 80 countries worldwide, including 18 in Europe and Central Asia. In the UK, simple decent homes have been built in Southwark, Belfast, Eastbourne and Banbury, and Liverpool and Birmingham will start building this year. We also recruit volunteers to help build homes in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas – our Global Village programme sends self-funded teams overseas for working holidays of two to three weeks.
About the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival
To find out more about the NYIIFVF, go to http://www.nyfilmvideo.com.
For more information or still images of the PSA, please contact Tom Price at Habitat for Humanity on telephone 0151 280 44850151 280 4485 or [email protected] or Judy Bottomley on telephone 01295 220 18501295 220 185 or [email protected]. You can also visit our website at http://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk.