A violin player plays for his audience. He closes his eyes and imagines himself escaping with his instrument. Around him, trees, monuments, and animals are slowly melting because to global warming. But he keeps playing.
Finally, he wakes up feeling relieved because the future he saw was a dream. His audience, tremendously fascinated, applauds his performance.
This is the story that Francina Ramos, a 16 year-old-girl from Cordoba, Argentina, imagined, then created, in 1,500 drawings that became the animated short movie ‘The Violin Player,’ which won the Action4Climate competition. The contest invited young filmmakers from around the world to create stories about climate change.
“The story is part of a dream I had”, says Francina, who spent two weeks drawing before and after school to finish her movie. She has studied climate change. “In my school I have ecology classes and I’m really interested in that,” she says.
Francina and her friend Braceras, a 16-year-old composer and musician, received first prize in the 14 - 17 year old age group. Their story was among 230 entries from 70 countries. All the contestants were charged with demonstrating how climate change consequences will affect the world and presenting solutions to combat one of the major challenges of this generation.
Both Francina and Benjamín have well-defined visions of their future vocations. Francina has written four other scripts, and would like to produce both animated movies and live action films. Benjamín has composed some 30 songs and plays violin, guitar, and piano. “I spend my entire day playing,” he says. “I started music classes when I was six.”
From Cordoba to the big apple
The Action4Climate jury, which awarded the competition’s prizes, was led by filmmaker and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci. The jury also included Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles, and other recognizable names from the film industry as well as well-known specialists on climate change, such as Rachel Kyte, vice president of The World Bank.
The animated short was also projected on one of the famous screens in New York City’s Times Square, a location visited by more than 300,000 people every day.
Recently, Francina and Benjamín traveled to Buenos Aires to attend the Ventana Sur 2014 Festival, one of the most important cinema markets in the region, where the film was showcased for hundreds of professionals from the cinema industry. There, the Argentinian film director Pablo Trapero – also member of the Action4climate jury – offered his compliments. “Trapero told us that he has loved our animation and that he saw it with his 12 years old son,” says Francina proudly.
