Jehane Noujaim's PANGEA DAY

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

Jehane Noujaim's PANGEA DAY

For those of you following the WIRE, you'll know that I am a great admirer of the TED(Technology. Entertainment. Design) series of lectures. Each year a TED prize is issued from a broad range of disciplines and in 2006, the winner was filmmaker Jehane Noujaim who was granted $100,000. Her aspiration was to create a day which would bring the world together through film and thus Pangea Day was born.

Here is the English trailer(Click HERE for additional languages):

And here is Kenya sings for India, one of the Imagine anthems:

This is Japan sings for Turkey (click HERE to view in high resolution):

From the organisers:

In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that -- to help people see themselves in others -- through the power of film.

On May 10, 2008 -- Pangea Day -- sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

Pangea is the name of the original super-continent which contained all the world's land mass before the continents started splitting apart 250 million years ago. We're launching Pangea Day with the vision that the people of the world can begin to overcome their divisions, and that the power of film can help make it possible.

Movies can't change the world. But the people who watch them can.

Jehane Noujaim is also the director of the highly recommended film Control Room, a documentary on Al Jazeera putting forward an alternative vantage point on the Iraq War and media in general.

UPDATE: Here are the first 20 minutes...