AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The Los Angeles Times

Audiences around the globe join for short films, speeches and one big drum circle.

There was a message in the drumbeats. The final moments of the first international Pangea Day event on Saturday were big on symbolism, as seven drummers of varied cultures were linked via satellite from Stage 15 at Sony Studios to an international drum circle scattered across the planet.

There were drummers from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America and elsewhere, all beating as one during a worldwide broadcast designed to encourage peace and understanding. Pangea Day was a four-hour program of short films, live music and brief messages of hope, humor and sadness, named for the prehistoric super-continent.

“By sharing stories, we have begun the process of turning strangers into friends,” filmmaker Jehane Noujaim told the U.S. studio audience in Culver City on the same soundstage where Dorothy and Toto once danced down the Yellow Brick Road. Noujaim had conceived of the idea of a multinational film festival broadcast, and it was supported through a prize from the annual TED Conference, a gathering of creative thinkers in science and culture.

The emphasis was on storytelling. The first film, “The Ball” from Mozambique, was a lighthearted short piece about African children building a soccer ball out of an inflated condom and yarn, while making a subtle message about sexually transmitted disease. It was followed by a film from Los Angeles, “A Thousand Words” by Ted Chung, which suggested the power of snapshots discovered on a found digital camera. Other films offered vivid scenes of sadness and contemplation, of joy and tragedy: a lonely French woman on the Metro, children at a Chad refugee camp. In “Walleyball” by Brent Hoff, Mexicans and Americans played an international game of volleyball by using the border fence as a net.

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