A call by ITN Productions for graduate film students to create an original short film based on the production company's original documentary - Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, has produced a striking result.
See the video below:
Cristina Picchi, a 30 year old filmmaker in London, has created a moving short film, that captures the responses of five people as they watch Sri Lanka's Killing Fields.
Speaking to Channel 4 news, Picchi said,
"When asked to edit a video using the film's footage I felt overwhelmed: everything seemed so important yet, when de-contextualised from the original narrative, so horrific and unnecessarily graphic. I then decided to take a different approach.
Eyes On The Ground is a simple video documenting five people watching Sri Lanka's Killing Fields for the first time. It deals with human emotions and with the processes of acknowledgment - a disturbing but necessary process that everyone can undertake by simply watching a film, a first small step towards the possibility of some sort of justice."
Her original response has been praised by Chris Shaw, the executive producer of Sri Lanka's Killing Fields for ITN, who said:
"The idea was to see if the raw material of our two films could be repurposed to reach a different audience - six film graduates were approached and each produced a really distinctive take on the Sri Lankan Killing Fields. Of the six films we viewed - all had real merit, but we felt Cristina Picchi's three minute film "Eyes On The Ground" stood out for its originality and lateral thinking."
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