Ban Ki goes to Hollywood

The next time you see an action hero save the world and get the girl, he may be wearing a blue helmet. That, at least, is the latest cunning plan from the United Nations, which wants the film industry's help in polishing its public image.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN's Secretary-General, quietly visited Hollywood this Oscar week, devoting a day to lobbying the world's most influential actors, directors, and film producers about the benefits of storylines that portray his organisation in a positive light.

Ban's "Global Creative Forum" was held at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and attended by Anne Hathaway, Demi Moore, Mira Sorvino, Sean Penn, Samuel L Jackson, director Jason Reitman, and such notable "suits" as the Universal Studios president, Ron Meyer.

"I'm here to talk to the creative community, Hollywood, about how they could help the United Nations," explained its host.

"I want to work with Hollywood, to use its technology and great reach to spread the word about peace, [international] development, human rights and empowering women and girls."

Colleagues of the UN Secretary-General say he's grown weary of the organisation being portrayed as a bumbling, New-York-based bureaucracy, and hopes to persuade film-makers to focus on the heroic stories behind its humanitarian work in countries such as Haiti, and peacekeeping missions in other global trouble spots.

"The creative community, through [TV] and movies, can reach millions and millions of people at once, repeatedly, and then 10 and 20 years after a film's been made, the messages can be constant."

Ban invited film-makers to consider using UN property as locations for projects that "change the attitudes and minds of people" about issues such as climate change, eliminating poverty and preventing the spread of disease.

It has not always been so easy. In the 1950s Alfred Hitchcock was prevented from shooting a key scene in North by Northwest at the UN.

Hollywood cameras were banned from its HQ right up to 2005, when Sydney Pollack succeeded, after endless lobbying, in getting permission to shoot the Nicole Kidman film The Interpreter there.

Warming to that theme in a Q&A session with Michael Douglas, Ban told delegates that the UN's activities were "sometimes more dramatic than Hollywood movies" and cited The Constant Gardener as a film that covered humanitarian and peacekeeping work in a compelling fashion.

To those who have sneered at his monochrome public image, the Korean-born Secretary-General also made a shock admission: a life-long obsession with cowboy movies, which he likes for their "obvious difference between good and evil".

The media were not invited to the conference so that the 400 delegates could talk freely. The press was also absent from a dinner for 300 industry figures hosted by Bill Clinton.

Reports emerged in the trade press, revealing that Ban spent part of the day in private meetings with the Hathaway, Penn, Moore and Maria Bello.

The event's organiser, Eric Falt, is the director of the UN's Information Centre, which is dedicated to changing perceptions of the organisation. He said it was part of the Creative Community Outreach Initiative, launched a year ago to court the entertainment industry.

"The idea is to use pop culture to highlight issues that are important to the UN, but may be a little abstract," he said.

"If you make a film that, say, explores female trafficking, then you can make a huge difference to public appreciation of something that previously only academics or governments really knew about."

The project made headlines last year, when Falt persuaded the makers and stars of science-fiction programme Battlestar Galactica to headline a conference on international diplomacy and human rights at UN headquarters with Whoopi Goldberg.

Since then, UN property, previously off-limits to all but the most dogged directors, has been used as a location for shows such as Law & Order and Ugly Betty, while the UN has been given a key role in the new season of 24.

"We also want to get film-makers to think about UN heroes," said Falt.

"We do have them out there, we really do, and they deserve to get attention. There has been a tendency to just look at the UN through the prism of this bureaucracy in New York."

Falt said he was "not asking for creative control" in return for UN co-operation, citing a new film by Hotel Rwanda director Terry George.

George, whose most famous film was scathing of UN inaction during the Rwandan civil war, is now making a film about Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian diplomat killed in a bombing in Iraq in 2003.

- INDEPENDENT