Thursday, May 15th, 2008...7:20 pm - Catherine Gleeson
Pangea Day a new model?
I’ve been meaning to post something about Pangea Day for a few weeks because I found it inspiring on a number of levels. I’m inspired by documentary filmmaker Jehan Noujaim and her acceptance speech at TED 2006 - which led to the creation of Pangea Day, a global film festival for social change held last Saturday 10 May which US ABC news described as “Groundbreaking”. It’s a pretty visionary thing for a documentary filmmaker to initiate and I think that there are techniques and forms in this that students and filmmakers could reflect upon. Noujaim has drawn on an international community to respond to global issues, and achieved an amazing result. She may also have shifted the model of documentary filmmaking by harnessing the power of Web 2.0, drawing upon the wisdom of the crowd and facilitating simultaneous conversations.
24 films (from 2500 submission), were broadcast over 4 hours from six locations worldwide in seven different languages and were viewed via the internet, television and mobiles. An global event like this is made far more possible by the convergence of everything we at LAMP ever talk about.
In addition to the main event and invitations to host an event or just give voice to an issue was the Anthems Project, where one country sings another country’s national anthem. Simple but incredibly powerful.
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