WFP launches new feature film Blood Diamond depicting hunger

New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) World Food Programme (WFP), the Food Aid Organisation of the United Nations, has launched a new public service announcement (PSA) film ''Blood Diamond'' with cast from Warner Brothers' describing drama on hunger, desperation and greed.

WFP, the world's largest humanitarian agency, hopes that the exposure generated by the Warner Bros. Pictures film featuring actors Djimon Hounsu and Jennifer Connelly in a new PSA will help raise much-needed awareness about hunger and poverty, which stalk more than 850 million people globally.

The film includes scenes depicting realistic aid operations as undertaken by WFP in '90s while feeding thousands of war victims who fled to Sierra Leone and to neigbouring countries.

WFP aid workers witnessed acute humanitarian needs and untold levels of violence and cruelty, similar to those depicted in the movie. ''Blood Diamond'' to be shown in cinehas and on television soon.

''Hunger is often the root cause of desperate acts by desperate people'', said Neil Gallagber, WFP's Director of Communications.

''Cinema is a very powerful medium to help generate greater awareness and concern about hunger, an issue largely ignored and little understood in the western world, where most people are far more worried about their waistlines,''he said.

''Hunger is bad governance, hunger is need, hunger is poverty, hunger is any number of things,'' said Edward Zwick, the Director of Blood Diamond.

''It's the outgrowth of something that is systemic, and when you have in place some system that is not enriching the lives of people whose country is being exploited, that leads to hunger. I think that exists in many areas of Africa, and in other parts of the world,'' he added, Some of the photographs used in the film trailer are part of a WFP/Benetton campaign launched in 2003, called ''Hunger'', which feaured powerful and intimate photos of war victims, including ex-combatants and amputees.

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency, which gives food to an average 90 million poor people in order to meet their nutritional needs, including 58 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world's poorest countries.

UNI