MTV Promotes AIDS Awareness Through Multi-Platform Film Competition

TORONTO, August 10: MTV’s
first multi-platform film competition, 48fest, will air in September across all of MTV’s
worldwide outlets—on air, online and on mobile phones, giving 48 youths
48 hours to create three-minute films on HIV and AIDS-related issues.

Eight teams of six youth
delegates to the XVI International AIDS Conference, made up of young people
from all over the world, will take part in 48fest. Each team will produce a film based on one of
eight subjects, which range from condom use and delaying or abstaining from sex
to violence against women and vulnerable populations. After the entries are
seen by a panel of judges—including Peter Piot, executive director of
UNAIDS; Christina Norman, the president of MTV; and Susanne Boyce, CTV’s
president of programming—the winner will be announced at the 48fest Awards Ceremony, to be held at Toronto’s Masonic
Temple on August 17. The conference takes place in Toronto from August 14-16.

The films will be made
available for broadcast across MTV’s worldwide network of 50 TV channels, 14
mobile TV channels, 18 broadband services and 44 websites. The shorts will then
be compiled into a 30-minute documentary, to be called Staying
Alive—48fest. The
documentary will also air across MTV’s international platforms. Both the shorts
and the documentary will be offered rights-free and cost-free to third-party
broadcasters worldwide.

"48fest gives young filmmakers the unique opportunity of
telling their own stories about HIV and AIDS in their own voice,” said Georgia
Arnold, the VP of public affairs at MTV Networks International. “At MTV, we
believe one of the strongest ways to deliver HIV and AIDS prevention messages
is to empower our viewers to talk about HIV and AIDS, enable them to use their
creativity, and give them a platform to share their voice with their peers.”