Marius Esparon wins IOC sustainable development film competition |28 May 2015

Young Marius Esparon is the lucky winner of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) sustainable development film competition launched earlier this year.

As reward the young man will take part in the week-long short film festival to take place in Mauritius in October.

The competition which was launched earlier this year was open to young people aged between 16 and 25 years old. They had to express their vision of sustainable development or best practices on their island in terms of sustainable development in a three-minute video.

Youths who took part were free to choose the style of the video, for instance fiction, drama, documentary, a music video 2Danimation among others.

The competition was open to young people and youth groups in all countries of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) including Zanzibar.

The competition has been organised by ISLANDS – a project of the IOC funded by the European Union and supported locally by telecommunication company Cable & Wireless, the Ministry of Education and several environmental non-governmental organisations.

Among the aims of the competition is to promote sustainable development of developing small island states (DSMI) of eastern and southern Africa and the Indian Ocean …………(ESIO) region by raising the social, economic and environmental level of its members.

A significant number of youths showed interest in the competition and submitted their entries but in the end six candidates were shortlisted and they received a phone from Cable & Wireless to carry out their filming.

Metissage (Seychelles) conducted training sessions on basic video productions with the finalists in February. This also involved one-to-one sessions on an individual basis with the finalists on their synopsis, story board as well as sound.

The six entries were from: Savio Lesperance of Andemik Productions with Hook & Line, Bertrand Belle with My Future, Tiva Uranie with Sustainable Practice for healthy reefs, Marius Esparon with Sustainable Development – Culture & Development, Demien Mougal  of Chad Studio with The story of a 100 Books, and Sheryl Crea, Lisa Bastienne & Shantan Barbe with The Imbalance.

Only one winner was selected and the prize went to Marius Esparon with Sustainable Development – Culture & Development.

Recently he met representatives of ISLANDS project Virginie Torrens who responsible for communications and Riccardo Magini, an economist, who briefed him on the regional competition which he will take part in in the October as the winner of the local competition.

 “It will be a great opportunity to learn more on film-making from the professionals of the film industry who will be present. For a week the Eco Clip winners from all the IOC islands will meet each other, their films will be projected and the professionals will teach them a lot more about film-making,” Ms Torrens said.

She said it will be a great opportunity for networking and establishing contacts and developing interest in the art.

For Marius taking part in the competition was also a wonderful experience though a little difficult.

“Doing a three-minute film is tricky because you need to be precise in your editing,” he pointed out.

For Marius culture and development, the theme he chose, was a rich one and there were lots of things to include.

“It was interesting I wanted to show the youths the importance of preserving our culture. Often we hear stories from our grandparents and other elders but it is also good to preserve these things. I enjoyed filming the different scenes in town, meeting the fishermen, talking to my grandma and all. For me it was a great pleasure as before that I did a little bit of filming for pleasure,” he said.

Marius is looking forward to meet the other winners in the region and take part in the forthcoming festival.

Meanwhile all the winning videos can be viewed online on EcoClip Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/EcoClip/414395628718934 and online: https://www.youtube.com/user/IOCISLANDS/videos