Serviceplan Belgium created an architectural model with a difference in order to promote an Amnesty International petition supporting human rights campaigner Ni Yulan, and drawing attention to the millions of Chinese forced out of their homes to make way for real estate.
New building projects in China come with a price. Ni Yulan is paying for it. For the past 20 years, China has been building on a scale never seen before. However the rapid construction comes at a price, with millions of Chinese people forced out of their homes to make way for luxury real estate, factories and roads. In this way, local administrators can meet the Communist Party’s desire to ensure economic growth. House evictions are often accompanied by violence, and the victims receive only a small compensation, which is no more than a fraction of the value of their home.
Civil rights Lawyer Ni Yulan has spent several years appealing to Chinese authorities to put an end to this injustice. Her peaceful activism has resulted in her eviction and torture.
Prestigious real estate projects are often promoted with attractive 3D simulations, where scale model figures live happily in an ideal environment. Serviceplan used the same visual language to promote a fictional real estate project in China. Except they created an architectural scale model with a twist, depicting police brutality against Ni Yulan, in order to draw attention to the millions of Chinese thrown out of their homes to make room for luxury buildings.
With this campaign Amnesty International draws attention to the plight of human rights defender Ni Yulan. The Amnesty International film has been broadcast during cultural festivals in Belgium. In order to reinforce the campaign, Serviceplan also created a stand around its 3D model with the same model figures, a poster, an ad and flyers.
In 2002 Ni Yulan was arrested when she filmed the demolition of a house. She was tortured for several days resulting in broken feet and kneecaps, and is now in a wheelchair. When she asked for compensation, she was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison. She also lost her license to work as a lawyer.
After her release, Ni Yulan continued her work supporting the growing number of victims of evictions. She was then detained twice more for a total of four and a half years. Outside the prison she was constantly harassed, given a travel ban and evicted from her home at least seven times, most recently in April 2017.
In solidarity with Ni Yulan, Amnesty International started a petition to defend her human rights. The Amnesty petition invites the Director of the Municipal Security Office of Beijing to provide a home for Ni Yulan and lift her travel ban.
CreditsClient Amnesty International Agency Serviceplan Belgium Naïm Baddich, Merel Van den Broeck, executive creative directors; Marc Thomasset, art director; Nathalie Strybos, copywriter; Veerle Guiljam, production; Gonzalo R. Checa, 3D artwork; Denise Hermo, Bart Leijnen, Stéphane Melnik, Sergio Menendez, graphic & motion design.
We Are Pi Rolls Out Trailer For Nike-Backed Feature On Athletes With Olympic and Paralympic Dreams
Amsterdam-based creative agency We Are Pi debuted the trailer for Crois Pas Qu’on Dort (Don’t Think We’re Sleeping in English), an inspiring feature-length story of three young French athletes in the lead-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics. The 90-minute French language film, which was developed and produced by We Are Pi with the support of Nike, will premiere in mid January 2025 followed by a release in theaters at the end of January. It follows three protagonists from Paris and its suburbs: Charles-Antoine, a runner with an intellectual disability who won Gold at the Tokyo Paralympics and is competing in this year’s Paralympics; and Leyna and Maysane, French twin sisters and heirs to their Laotian-Algerian family’s very own taekwondo dynasty who are coached by their father and dream of competing in taekwondo at Paris 2024. The athletes were followed by a film crew over the course of five years, recording how their stories, their lives and their sporting achievements unfold over time. The film combines the rawness and intimacy of their everyday lives with the audacity of their sporting dreams, with their stories culminating at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympics. Crois Pas Qu’on Dort was created with the aim of inviting a new generation of athletes in France into sport by inspiring them with the stories of our protagonists and the transformative power that sport had on their lives. The production began over seven years ago in 2017 with nearly two years of extensive casting sessions that involved viewing around 500 profiles of athletes. Two directors, Nick Walters and Lou Marillier, English and French, respectively, subsequently followed the selected young protagonists closely as they pursued their... Read More