Gilles Porte Film Series Sells Worldwide

PARIS: Launched at MIPCOM by GEDEON Programmes, Portraits Self-Portraits, directed by Gilles Porte in association with UNICEF for the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has notched up a slew of international sales.

Co-produced in France by Arte, TV5 Monde and Gulli, the series of short films has already been sold to eight channels. The broadcasters are NHK in Japan, SBS in Australia, YLE in Finland, Odisea in Spain, Halogen TV in the U.S., Argentina Canal Educarse, Planete Polska of Poland and Slovakia’s SVT. Negociations are currently pending with around ten other channels.

For the series, French filmmaker Gilles Porte traveled across 20 countries to film 600 children—aged 3 to 6—drawing their self portrait. Eighty children were selected for the editing of 1.5-minute films, a mixture of shooting, animation and photography. Each film ends with the signature of UNICEF and a sentence on children’s rights. The jazz musician Louis Sclavis composed the original music of these films.

The series will be aired in November on the different channels in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights—for children. Alongside the TV airings, more than 30 exhibitions of the children’s drawings will be organized throughout France and in different parts of the world: Montreal, Canada; Sydney, Australia; Nairobi, Kenya; Pereira, Colombia; and Colombo, Sri Lanka.