On Saturday at 11:30pm, Mumbai and five other cities will have brought the world together, in an endeavour to celebrate peace and harmony.
MUMBAI: On Saturday at 11:30pm, Mumbai and five other cities will have brought the world together, in an endeavour to celebrate peace and harmony. Mumbai along with Cairo, Kigali in Rwanda, London, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro is being linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers to celebrate Pangea Day.
Pangea Day, which is being supported by celebrities like Cameroon Diaz, Goldie Hawn and Meg Ryan, was born out a wish of filmmaker Jehane Noujaim when she won the TED Prize in 2006, and was granted $100,000. Her wish was to bring the world together through the medium of film.
24 short films out of the 2,500 submitted will be screened, and also included are musical performances and speeches from Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour and musician/activist Bob Geldof. It is to be telecast live on the internet, cellphones and television channels like Star World, and one of the 24 selected films also includes Sumit Roy's, an Indian filmmaker, Dancing Queen, which has been shot on a cellphone.
''This is a grand experiment to see the world through the eyes of others and hopefully reduce the cultural, religious and political differences between people,'' says Tom Hamilton, representative of Pangea Day.
"We wanted to make Pangea Day a truly global media event and thus, we had to come to Mumbai," adds Hamilton. The reason for coming to Mumbai is simple says Hamilton. "It is not just the cultural and film capital of India, playing host to a large and successful film industry, but also represents the growth of the country and is immensely diverse."
Apart from the National Centre of Performing Arts, Mumbai, where it will be telecast, residents of Dharavi are not being left behind. Kaospilots Oresund, an NGO is organizing a broadcast of the entire show live in the slum. "The concept behind Pangea Day is to be able to reach out to the entire world. We wanted people from all sections, irrespective of class divides, whether they were Colaba or Dharavi to be a part of this event," says Ingemar Petterson, a representative from Kaospilots Oresund. Despite a few initial power shortage hiccups, generators and the determination of volunteers have set them on course to make one of the world's largest slums a part of this event of hope and unity.
At this unique global event, Mumbai will join in along with the likes of Cameron Diaz to wish our counterparts across the seven seas a 'Happy Pangea Day'.
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