CHENNAI: With the need for blood in India growing by the minute, comedian Vivekh urged youth to use the Internet to bridge that gap.
“Nowadays everything we do is through apps and smartphones. This should be the case with blood too. The Internet is a very powerful medium and it should be used to collect and donate blood and not spill it,” he said.
Vivekh spoke at a programme to announce a National Short Film Competition on Blood Donation, aptly launched on World Blood Donors Day.
“Recently, there was an image of a religious figure with a slipper garland around the neck that was circulated on Facebook and WhatsApp, which led to a lot of bloodshed and chaos. The Internet shouldn’t be used for such things, but for good causes such as promoting blood donation ,” he added.
Yesteryear comedian and filmmaker Pandiarajan jocularly spoke about his own tryst with making short films - how he had gone from being the butt of other people’s jokes to someone who won jury awards for his short films from places as far away as Brazil, Cape Town, and New York.
“It is a great medium of reaching people in this day and age and believe me, a short film can travel great distances that long feature films cannot,” he told aspiring filmmakers.
The Short Film competition is jointly organised by online blood donation community friends2support.org, Vels University and the National Blood Transfusion Council, Government of India. The films, which are mandated to be under 3 minutes in length, will be seen by a panel that includes Vivekh, directors Pandiarajan, A L Vijay, Prabhudeva, Yuhi Sethu and others like Dr K I Varaprasad Reddy and Dr Shobini Rajan.
When the best three are selected on September 15, they will be taken by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and used in blood donation campaigns nationally.
The competition is open to any filmmaker residing in India with a statement that the film was exclusively made for this competition and only after January 1, 2015. Details on how to enter the competition can be accessed at www.friends2support.org/shortfilm