Baha’i Perspectives

Pangea for a Day: Part I

Baha'i Perspectives June 22nd, 2008

One of our readers, Samah Tokmachi, recently attended Pangea Day, an event whose aim is to bring the world together through the medium of film. Samah, himself a filmmaker, shares with us some of his experiences and observations from this historic event in a 2-part report. Thank you, Samah!

A number of you may have heard of Pangea Day (www.pangeaday.org), the event that recently took place around the world and was billed as the Earth’s first global campfire.

But you may not have known about the Pangea Day Filmmaker’s Retreat — an event which only certain selected filmmakers were invited to participate in. Fortunately, there were three Bahá’í filmmakers in attendance: Bita Haidarian, Josh Homnick and myself.

The following is summary of my experiences at this phenomenal and historically unprecedented event:

In the evening of Friday May 8^th, there was a poolside reception for all of the filmmakers. Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails were served, and it was a very impressive display indeed. Actually, I must add, the filmmakers were very well treated and well fed for the duration of the event. When I entered the reception area, I felt very much at home, surrounded as I was by filmmakers from all over the planet, and over the next few hours I met many more filmmakers, talking to them about their projects. I was deeply humbled to be in the company of so many accomplished film artists, all of whom were passionately committed to serving humanity in some way.

The next day was the Pangea Day Filmmakers retreat. To begin with, documentarian Jehane Noujaim and Chris Anderson, curator of the TED foundation, addressed us. It was highly significant to hear from these two individuals. Jehane’s work as a filmmaker was launched into the public’s consciousness with her documentary “Control Room“.

Soon after this newfound renown, Jehane won the TED Prize from its namesake foundation which gives winners $100,000 — and the opportunity to fulfill a wish. In Jehane’s case, her wish for world peace is a bit beyond TED’s mandate, so instead she chose to work towards it with Pangea Day — a live, global event simultaneously broadcasting from locations on every continent. The idea behind Pangea Day, Jehane explained, was to bring people from around the world together, through the universal language of film.

Chris Anderson reinforced this idea, sharing a thought I’ve really only heard articulated in depth in the literature of the Bahá’í’ Faith: “Whenever we look at the big problems we face, we see that they are global in nature. Therefore their solutions also need to be global. But in order to adequately meet these challenges we must unite humanity.”

He then said he regarded us as founding members of a movement of global filmmakers whose purpose is to build bridges into a new world.

After this stirring address, we were broken up into various groups with our own group leaders, all of who were accomplished in the world of cinema in some way. My group leader was Matthew Modine, the actor probably most known for his role in Full Metal Jacket. Matthew proved to be a truly lovely human being. Surprisingly, he had never heard of the Bahá’í’ Faith, but he seemed very interested upon hearing about it. We introduced ourselves and spoke about culture and how it informed our storytelling, as well as addressing the question of whether or not there was a universal narrative that connects us all…

[to be continued]