One Minute Awards 2005

december 2005 -

The date: 13 November, a Sunday. The place: The Paradiso in Amsterdam. The occasion: The prize-giving ceremony for the One Minute Awards 2005, awards for the eight best video films that last precisely one minute each. The festival was also attended by eighteen young people who were the nominees for the junior competition awards, itself an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation and Unicef.

OneMinutes

Winners Ionela Costachi en Andreas Öhman

In the end, the One Minute Awards for young people went to Ionela Costachi from Moldavia and Andreas Öhman from Sweden who received not only the Tommy Award but also a video camera - and publicity on an international scale. The public broadcasters SVT (Sweden), YLE (Finland) and TV3 (Spain) followed the nominees during their stay in Amsterdam to record their experiences and to hear the stories behind their films.

About three hundred video films were sent in by young people aged between 14 and 20 years old. Those who got through to the final round were youngsters from the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Russia, Moldavia, Serbia and Sweden. Ionela Costachi won her award thanks to the powerful yet simple message in her video 360º Solitude about the effects of migration. Jury member Akram Zaatari from the Lebanon, himself a respected video artist and previous winner of the One Minute Award, spoke of his admiration of her film's purity.

Andreas Öhman saw his video One Minute win an award thanks to its beautiful narrative structure, technical precision and intellectual approach. One Minute is about the sell-by date for things - and people. The philosophical voiceover has the following message for the viewer, namely that he or she should make good use of every minute of his or her life.