Malaysia shares top honours

New Straits Times, Tuesday, August 8, 1989.

KUALA LUMPUR, Mon - A simple idea and message has enabled Malaysia to share the top prize in an international competition to heighten awareness of the threat and consequences of nuclear war.

The winning Malaysian entry is a one-minute film titled Ceasefire' 89.A song from the Soviet Union shares the honours.

The film shows a green and blue globe made of 10,000 matches - green for land and blue for sea.

A match is lit and placed against it. Within seconds the whole globe is aflame, depicting what can happen should there be nuclear war.

The voice-over says this: "This message is addressed to everyone committed to the preservation of mankind and to the following world leaders:
President George Bush
President Francois Mitterrand
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev
Premier Li Peng
The human race is endangered - threatened with extinction by 50,000 nuclear warheads stockpiled on our earth.

But it is very much our choice - to stand up for world peace or succumb to nuclear devastation.

(At this point the film shows a lit match placed against the globe of matches. Then as the globe goes in flames these added words): We appeal to all world leaders to consider our right to life. To end the nuclear arms race before it ends mankind.

Support ceasefire'89, Support the right to life."


Datuk Lim Kok Wing, creative director of Wings/BBDO which produced the film, said he was delighted and declared that the prize was for all Malaysians.

The film took about a week to conceptualise and produce.

He received word of the win today from Bernard Lown, CO-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Cambridge, US.

The joint winner is Dr Boris Bondareko of the Soviet Union who wrote a song titled Physicians prescription: appeal for peace and ceasefire.

There were more than 30,000 entries in all, 50 from Malaysia.

For their effort, Datuk Lim and Dr Bondarenko will be guests at the 9th World Congress of the IPPNW in Hiroshima in October.

The winning film is expected to be shown around the world.

It is currently being shown at the Dewan Bandaraya here as part of a poster exhibition on the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forty-four years ago.