Pangea Day: Promoting Peace Pixel by Pixel, Skeptic by Skeptic
“I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film,” declared a nervous, shy Jehane Noujaim onstage at the TED 2006 conference.
Then, Jehane was best known as the Arab-American director of “Control Room”—an unsettling documentary on the media coverage of the start of the war in Iraq.
Two years later on May 10, 2008—thanks to a consortium of corporate genies from TED, NOKIA, YouTube, and supporters like Queen Noor of Jordan, Cameron Diaz, Goldie Hawn, Bob Geldof and Phillippe Starck—Jehane's wish came true.
The result: Pangea Day—four hours of live simultaneous global broadcasts in seven languages of films made by dozens of amateurs from more than 100 countries. Months ago, I had mentioned Pangea Day to a few friends who seemed to under-react to the idea of live global film screening as a path to peace. I tended to nod more or less in agreement.
At the invitation of the Levantine Cultural Center, I now found myself in one of the best-funded (with both social capital and cash) crosscultural events of the progressive movement. I was accompanied by my 14-year-old son whose take on things is often (but not always, I keep arguing) sharper than mine.
Once past the tight security to Stage 15, the event headquarters at Sony Studios in Culver City, we entered a tall cavern resplendent with a “liberal” embarrassment of riches—a gathering of a thousand peace-minded folks, world luminaries and their corporate sponsors to watch short films from around the world. While a few, Hollywood elite included, seemed to have been strong-armed to turn up to the event by their strong-minded bosses and companions, most—at least under the floodlights, giant jibs and robotic cameras—seemed to be in a world-aware, "we can overcome" kind of mood.
As part of the obligatory “kumbaya,” people were asked to introduce themselves to those sitting around them on the bleachers by shaking hands and saying beamingly "Hi, my name is...." Some even hugged.
Dangerously lacking breakfast and my morning coffee, I nonetheless swallowed my scroogy mood and exchanged a few greetings.Thus, in the largest sound stage in the Western Hemisphere, linked up to a thousand Pangea Day events around the world, our global congregation of strangers began its transcultural Shabbat for peace via satellite.
While impressed, I wondered whether Stage 15 was also the site of the decapitated goat that was the centerpiece of an infamous launch party in 2007 to promote the God Of War II game for Sony PlayStation 2. It certainly was where a tough US President declared to America and its enemies: “Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid."
Stage 15 was, in fact, where “Airforce One” was filmed in 1996, in which a tough President Harrison Ford kills numerous terrorists in mid-air and with his bare hands. So films do influence us, it seems. Except today, it was Jehane's turn.
Our kumbaya notwithstanding, my empty stomach kept me skeptical. On Pangea Day, like the day before, we were Americans at a turning point than can twist either way. Nearly a decade of unapologetic, ineffectual ideology-snorting by both left, right and center does not a genuine movement for change make.
And, anyway, it was a media event at Sony—neither an Obama appearance nor a Ronald Reagan seance—but a shiny, PR-inflected cultural celebration of peace that may connect the converted but would do little to persuade those, liberals or conservatives, who distrust or even despise such “naivete.”
Yet my teenage son stared, clearly fascinated by the stories on the screen.
In Jehane's own documentary “Combatants for Peace,” we watched a former Israeli soldier who transported dying children from a suicide bombing in his helicopter and a former member of the resistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territories whose 10-year-old daughter was killed outside of her school renounce violence and strive together for peace.
Or in Brent Hoff's Walleyball, we laughed watching the world’s most illegal game of volleyball – played at the U.S.-Mexico barrier. Mocking one of the world's most militarized borders between the rich North and poor South, these Americans and Mexicans turned the 20-foot fence into a net for their beach volleyball tournaments. Hoff summarizes the scene this way: “on one side, helicopters and machine guns; on the other, mariachi bands and families sharing popsicles."
Under the flicker of the screens, my son's face seemed to say: "So this is possible, people actually thinking and doing intelligent things for peace, with foresight, and for the sake of each other."
The turning point for us both was when Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad, an Israeli mother and a Palestinian man whose son and brother respectively were killed in the conflict, came on-stage to appeal for peace and reconciliation despite (and more importantly, because) of their terrible loss. The powerful film “Encounter Point” tells their incredible stories.
When Ali and Robi hugged tightly like mother and son, many wiped their eyes to better watch them descend slowly from the stage. By investing their grief in hope, and by their participation in the bereaved families forum Parents Circle, they had broken the chains of "Us and Them," shamed the rejectionists of peace and inspired the rest of us.
My right to be skeptical was finally trumped by the living example of people whose courage and compassion I would be extremely hard pressed to match.
Pangea Day was a global invitation to restart the memory of the first decade of twenty-first-century by supplanting fear, division and low expectations with a partnership for actionable change. Film as a medium offered us a chance to “learn” the world through global eyes and think again. Whether from Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas, the films' message was “let's explore the possibilities, reexamine ourselves, understand our connections, and think ahead for the future, before it's too late.”
For my teenage son, it was a sign that even in a time of war, terror, ignorance and arrogance art can help make whole—at least for a moment—our fragile, frangible world.
Pangea Day reminded us—film after film, speaker after speaker—that a mature, courageous and compassionate America can make a world of difference; that only a world that sees through humane rather hate and fear-filled eyes can look forward to a bright future.
This—and not just another film festival—was Jehane's and her global audience's real wish.
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You can watch the event, the films, and learn more about Pangea Day here.
So much of the good things that happen in our communities do so thanks to volunteers--from those caring for the homeless, to those who donate blood, or serve in neighborhood councils ; )...and such.
