reporting Pangea Day live, from Bangalore
The time is 9:51 and everybody is assembling in the main room after having delicious chhole bhature. Deepak Rajanna is making the introduction. He is the force behind it all. This is his vision along with Shekhar’s. Hats off to you guys!!! Special thanks to Gautam, Tina and Prashant from Thoughtworks for all the arrangements and impecaable management. We have around 130 people in here to celebrate Pangea Day from bangalore !
10.00
We’ve started off by a showcase of the the TED 2006 talk by Jehane Noujaim, the harbinger of this event which has all of us gathered here today. Gist of the talk is this. Most of us have experienced that watching a movie gives you a feeling of transformation and that could be a medium of change. Can we channelize this emotional impact, by having one day when everybody in the world gets together and we experience all of this as a community. Together. At the same time. This idea is the basis of Pangea Day, and its hard to think of a better introduction for the event.
10.20
The talk seems to have had its effect and now we move on to the live performances. First up is Mohnish, with “save tonight” . Great performance. Next up is Jayanth, and he’s just done a brilliant guitar solo and presently we have him playing “wish you were here”, Pink Floyd. Its rocking out here!
10.45
Still in the middle of the performances. Now we have “three blue shadows” playing “get over it”, Eagles and pretty good too!
11.00
Half an hour to the show, and having a couple of off the hand performances now.
11.30
It starts.
Christian, CNN from london takes the mike as the first speaker. She talks about the “Pangea Principal”, where people to people power would triumph.
From the pyramids of Egypt, Queen Noor of Jordan starts with the profound age old wisdom – ‘let peace be with you’ . “We are so close that it is only natural that we should be only one community. Dr Porco talks about how fragile the earth and human species is and the power and courage that we stand for. “We are the dreameries of big dreams”
We are now shown an amazing video which shows our planet in Saturn’s sky – The earth is a very small stage, a fraction of a dot – for the moment earth is where we need to live, our home is a pale blue dot and there can not be a more humbling experience than that. Why do we wage wars, why do we hate each other so fervently, for an insignificant piece of dust – why are we maddened by our self conceived self importance.
A movie on how each year 20 million condoms are sold in Mozambique. Some of these are used by little kids to make football!!!
Wust gives the first live performance from Egypt. Peppy music. Sounds happy and cheery although I can’t understand a word!
MOVIE 1: Ted Chung, USA is the first one to go. Its an amazing movie without a dialogs about love and power of cmmunication through images.
Joy, Sorrow, Coming of age, Dance, Hope – profound feelings which unite us all – they might be happening in any part of the world, in any culture, to anyone – but they always arise the same emotions in us – they always feel the same. Short clips are seen of these form all over the world. These the traits featured in every human society.
Prof, Donals Brown, anthropologist talks about “Human Universals” – features common to all humans. 100s of these flash on the screen.
There are different movies on human universals collected through the project called 6 billion others.
Human Universal 1 – LOVE
MOVIE 2 : Phillip Orreindy – I’ll wait for the next one – about a single guy looking for your girlfriend – hilarious
MOVIE 3: Jehane Noujam – About how a married couple share deep, eternal love and how they are always open books for each other
Human Universal 2 – HAPPINESS
MOVIE 4: Zach and White – Refugee Camps in Sierra Lion. Beautiful song, on refuge. Regugee all stars band. These guys sang together in the camps, and now they are a band. And one that has everybody tapping their feet here in bangalore.
All right, couple of very short films from the NOKIA Mobile Film Making Awards.
Dancing Queen, Sumit Roy, India.
Human Universal 3 – DREAMS
MOVIE 5: MORE. Can’t explain this guys, you’ve got to see it yourself.
MOVIE 6: AMERICAN PROJECT – Topaz Adizes. About a displaced cuban who’s now settled in New York and comes back to meet his family.
MOVIE 7: WalleyBall – This game is played across the border of US and Mexico!
Performance by GILBERTOGIL. And the time is 1pm here, me back after coffee.
MOVIE 8: Papiroflexia: Environment.
Human Universal 4 -TEARS
MOVIE 9: I remember, Lebanon. Loss of a woman during civil war in Lebanon.
Now we have a conversation between two guys who were on the opposite sides during the war. These guys used to hate each other as a community and describe it quie vivdly as well. They have now managed to rise above the hatred and work together as a community and as living examples of how we can love each other despite our differences.
MOVIE 10: Elevator Music: seems this is the one most loved one here till now. About respecting each others space.
MOVIE 11: Stille post:
MoVIE 12: Homecoming, Richard Robin
Commercial Break.
MOVIE 13: The Slap: This from Iran. Not bad at all
And now we’ve got Jonathan Harris. Presenting we feel fine.
MOVIE 14: Minenos
Human Universal 5 -FEAR
And now we have another, unannounced commercial break from Star World :-\
MOVIE 15: Inja,
Human Universal 6 -ANGER
JEAN PAULSIMPATU(singer/songwriter) performs from Kigali, Rwanda live va the internet(pardon if incorrect spelling)
and Iam sick of these commercial, time : 2.15
Next Speaker: Eboo Patel. from Giza Egypt. On how we form opinions of different parts of the world on the basis of a limited public media available to us.
Human Universal 7 – LAUGHTER
performing: Goldie Hawn on laughter.
MOVIE 16 : selections From the laugther club. And I don’t know how laughter is so contagious. We have the whole crowd laughing here just by looking at these people laugh. Jeez I love this. They’ve even got laughter dances! Group dances with groups giving performances while laughing aloud.
And Now we are going to have a pangea day global laugh. Hold on a second there, really?
yes sir, you’ve got everybody laughing togethter in the world. Excellent. and yes, we did our part from here in bangalore.
Performing: Roki Atraore, Malain Recording artist. Sounds nice even though I have no idea what she is singing about. time here: 2.30.
Movie 17: Selection from control room, Jehane. Egypt. On war. Quite powerful
And now we have the lady finaly speaking, Jehane Noujaim on stage!
Quieen Noor, Her Majesty, Jordan’s back with a few more words.
Movie 18: Selections from Encounter Point.
Now we have two people from Palestine and Israel, ALi Abu and Robi. Both have lost a loved one from their families to the ongoing tension between the two countries.
They’ve shared their really touching stories and if these guys can forget their anguish and believe in peace, I don’t know why can’t anybody else in the world. Most inspiring. And I love the quote he ended with, from Gandhi- There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
And presently we have another commercial break, and the advertisements are just getting longer and longer now. 3 am here and I see at least two people dozed off on their Aeron chairs. Rest still hanging in:-)
This was a real long break and I guess we missed some stuff. Back in business now though.
Nadi Rahx performing now. I guess the song is called “I hate this”. And now the band is performing a beautiful song but I missed the name:-( Its an amazing piece nonetheless.
Returning to london for the final speaker: Karen Armstrong.
Time : 3.20.
Just before it ends, a beautiful short film based on Imagine by John Lennon. Splendid ending.
Oh there’s more. Drums. A drum performance with drums from all over the world. And we can see videos from all over the world with people playing their native drum sounds. Rio De jenaro, London, Mumbai, Rwanda, egypt…this is amazing.
And seems we’re finally going to call it a day…or night, whatever suits you. Looks like we’ve had a successful run here. Its been a great experience and most people seem to have made it through awake till now, which is something given the fact this is a saturday night over here.
time: 3.30. Great show!
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