This is a short film without any dialogues made by a group of students from class 8A, Hanoi – Amsterdam Secondary School. It has shown their concern about smoking in a gentle yet meaningful way.

 The group of 5 girls from 8A, Hanoi – Amsterdam Secondary School (Hanoi) making “The Mirror”

(Photo: website of Hanoi – Amsterdam High School)

Their short, called “The Mirror”, won the title of “Best Film with Social theme” in “Through the Lens of Children 2011” for primary and secondary students.

The story is about a boy who grew up in a smoking environment: at home his father smoked, in the park, on the playground, at the bus stop… people smoked everywhere. Though he tried to stay away from it, he eventually took up smoking, and when he became a father, the little boy of old times turned out to be a smoking-addict.

The film ended with the father smoking in front of his son and making his grandfather cough heavily. Instead of sitting still doing nothing or running away from it, the little boy came to tell his father to throw the cigarette to the dustbin.

About the meaning of the film, Thao Linh shared: “Nowadays we see people smoking everywhere. It affects not only the smokers themselves but also people around them, so we chose to make this clip to improve people’s awareness of smoking’s bad effects, and therefore keep off it.”

Using a camcorder, filming and making montage for the first time, Minh Khue said: “At first we had a lot of difficulties filming. All of us are girls so we’re not very skilled and experienced in filming techniques. Like when we planned for this, we thought of going to the cinema as many people smoke there, but on the day we got there, we didn't catch many of them so we wasted quite an amount of time. Besides, we didn't know much about editing so we had to ask for help from the organizers of the competition to perfect our clip.”

To complete this short, the students only took part in an intensive course in film-making in the summer of 2011.

Click to watch “The Mirror”

 The film winning this year’s first prize was “Think of the Environment before pressing Print” by students from Marie Curie Secondary School. The film is about economizing on paper and it has shown their creativity as well as their profound outlook on the matter.

The group of students from Marie Curie Secondary School making “Think of the Environment before pressing Print”

(Photo: Hoa hoc tro)

Not only did they touch on the economical use of paper to protect trees but they also presented very persuasive images and statistics on the matter.

Click to watch “Think of the Environment before pressing Print”

Author: Đức Tài (extracted from vietnamnet,vn)

 Translator: Hoàng Thanh Thảo ( A1 11-14)