Indian film a hit at Copenhagen

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 19: Kerala filmmaker Arun Bose’s one-minute documentary My Paper Boat about a boy who uses a string to drag a paper boat on a dry surface to drive home to the world the ill-effects of climate change was screened every day at the Copenhagen summit, the director said.

An ecstatic Bose, who received a cash prize of £1,000 for the film, said that everything happened in a jiffy.

‘’My one-minute film was selected as the winner among 174 films from across the globe in the ‘One Minute to Save the World 2009’ competition. I was told that on all days of the Summit, it was being shown on a screen which was a cube and placed in the middle of a lake. This made me even happier,’’ he quipped.

Bose said about two months ago, he was invited by the British Council to make the one-minute film.

‘’The spark came from the fact that I have been a short film and documentary filmmaker for the past three years and was fresh from a half-an-hour documentary that I made on the 100 years of drought in two villages of Orissa.

“Soon my friends Sachin, Kiran and Deepu decided to do My Paper Boat,’’ said Bose, who is now waiting for his visa to go to the Britain to do an MA in film studies at the University of Newcastle.