Over two hundred people turned up for the Peace and Creativity Salon at the United Nations University on Friday, 26 September. We set up a screen and video projector in the UNU courtyard, and Global Lives built their installation at the front of the campus (photo credit - Jason Hall).

The event began at 5pm with the first public screening of the Wisdom Years, a new documentary from the UNU and the World Health Organization. The documentary looks at ageing in Japan.

This was followed by the world premiere of the new documentary from Director Tim Wise, entitled Soldier of Peace. We had a video conference link up with Tim and he explained that his intention when making the filmq was to “put peace back on the agenda in the 21st Century.”

We then went into salon mode with plenty of time for people to interact over food and drink. At this point in the evening, we held a screening in the UNU Media Studioof the award winnng documentary from the UNU entitled Voices of the Chichinuatzin. We rounded the evening off with a dance performance from PeaceBoat.

The event was organized by the UNU, in collaboration with Temple University, Global Lives, and many more.

Expand your social network, enjoy a night of global engagement through film, and feel the power of film as a vehicle for positive change.

To celebrate the 2008 International Day of Peace, UNU invites you to the Asian premiere of the movie Soldiers of Peace. Also screening will be the latest documentaries from UNU — The Wisdom Years and Voices of the Chichinautzin.

The event begins at 5:00 p.m. on Friday September 26 at UNU in Tokyo. Admission is free.

Details and registration

The Wisdom Years documentary was screened at Silver College in Kobe on 8 and 9 September 2008 and colleagues from the WHO Centre for Health Development were on hand to answer questions.

Silver College appears in the Wisdom Years documentary as an example of how communities can provide educational facilities for retirees. The screenings were well recevied by the college students and over one hundred attended.

Also this week, we completed the English and Japanese versions of the website that suppoorts the documentaries. We call it an e-case study (similar to Saving the Ayuquila River).

Take a look and let us know what you think.

On Saturday, August 30 at 7 PM, “Voices of the Chichinautzin” screened at the Moondance International Film Festival, in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. The documentary was very well received by an international audience of filmmakers, writers, and the general public. Many people were interested to learn more about the Chichinautzin region, the current status of illegal logging, and the issues the local communities continue to face.

The Moondance Film Festival’s primary goal is “to present films and scripts which have the power to raise awareness about vital social issues, educating writers, filmmakers and film festival audiences and inspiring them to take positive action. Moondance believes in the unique power of the world of entertainment media to create great social and environmental change”.

I had the pleasure of attending the Moondance Festival and it was very rewarding to see the documentary generating awareness about the issues in the Chichinautzin and inspiring people to take action on similar issues in their own backyards. A great honor was to receive the Sandcastle Award for “Best Feature Documentary”, which is an award for a female and male filmmaking team. As writer-director, I had the opportunity to work with a great team on this project. Congratulations to all of our crew, everyone at the UNU Media Studio, the Autonomous University of the State of Morales in Mexico, the communities of Tepoztlan,  Nepopualco, and San Juan Atzingo, and especially many thanks to my collaborator, producer and co-director, Luis, for his creative energy and commitment to this documentary project.

Voices of the Chichinautzin was awarded Best Science and Ecology Documentary at the 2nd IberoAmerican Film Festival held in Tepotzlan, Mexico, 11-18 May 2008.

Luis Patron, from the UNU Media Studio, was on hand to pick up the special Zapata statue. He was also present at the screening and participated in the follow-on question and answer session.

The documentary tells the story of the daily struggles of the local communities as they try to protect a biodiverse region outside Mexico City from illegal logging and development pressures. It was written, directed and co-produced by Patricia Sims, produced and co-directed by Luis Patron and edited by Michael Clark. The graphics and animations were produced by Sean Wood and David Jimenez.

The documentary will be screened on television in Mexico later this year.

Note: The photo of the statue is taken from the festival website.

Some images from the opening ceremony of the Iberoamerican Documentary Festival in Tepoztlan, Mexico. The UNU-produced documentary Voices of the Chichinautzin is part of the official selection of the festival.

The Pangea Day event on Saturday night in the UNU Media Studio was a great success. We ended up with around 50 participants from 14 different countries for what was essentially an over-night event. The group energy remained relatively high all the way to morning as can be seen in the video that was taken some time after 6am.

It was a great experience to be a part of the first ever Pangea Day with such an interesting variety of global citizens gathered together here in the Media Studio.

Information about this world wide event and highlights of the program and many of the included films are on the Pangea Day website.

The UNU will participate in the Pangea Day event organized by the people who bring you TED - Technology, Entertainment and Design.

To learn more about Pangae Day visit the website for this historic global event.

For those who prefer a video explanation, please see the video by the founder of Pangea Day.

The UNU Media Studio will be the venue for the Tokyo event and already a number of filmmakers, designers, educators and social entrepreneurs are planning to participate. Since this is a live programme of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers linking venues across the world, the actual timing would be from 3am to 7am this Sunday (11 May 2008).

Due to the size limitations for the venue, participation is by invitation only.

Today, the UNU Media Studio participated in an online seminar with the Pan-Pacific Distance Learning Association. We were talking about Open Content, Open Software and Open Learning. The presenters were Paul McKimmy from the University of Hawaii, Scott Belford from the Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation and myself from the UNU.

We used Elluminate to connect everybody and as a presented it was a really interesting experience. I am pretty comfortable now making presentations over video conferencing. However, with Elluminate you really need to multi-task since there is are plenty of options for audience interaction.

They can raise their hands for questions, give you a smiley face or thumbs down, or you can poll their opinions. It is all pretty seamless, but takes some getting used to.

We were looking to have excellent moderators from the UH College of Education - Peter Leong and Adam Tanners - who basically kept an eye on things. Thanks so much fro this valuable experience!

The UNU produced documentary Voices of the Chichinautzin has been selected to participate in the official section of the Iberoamerican Documentary Film Festival of Memory in Tepoztlan, Morelos.

The exciting thing about this is that the documentary tells the story of the city in which the festival is being held. It will be a great opportunity to use the documentary as an environmental education media tool, and to have an interesting discussion with the people that are featured in the movie.

The festival will take place between May 11 and 18. For more information please visit the festival website (in Spanish only).