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.

p>Year by year the number of disasters in the Asia Pacific region continues to increase. Extreme weather events related to climate change are one reason for this increase. However, the region has also been struck by several major earthquakes affecting highly populated areas.

The United Nations University is planning to offer an advanced seminar series on Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance. The series will be implemented in collaboration with the University of Hawaii and a network of partners in the region.

The first lecture will begin on 25 September and will continue each week until 11 December 2008. This course is designed for graduate students and professionals interested in disaster management and relief.

The lectures are delivered by experts from across the region and each class lasts one and a half hours. The classes take place through video conference with online support via a learning management system. All lectures are conducted in English.

The courses are integrated into existing teaching programmes at the partner universities. In Tokyo, students taking the course must attend classes in the Media Studio on the ground floor of the UNU building.

If you live in or around Tokyo and you are interested in applying for the course, please send an email and one page curriculum vitae to the following email address by Monday 22 September (onlinelearning@unu.edu). Pleases are limited.

Photo Source: Lakerae

With global warming and climate change currently generating one of the most vigourous of global debates, there are a lot of mixed messages and information out there to digest.

Somehow cutting through the clutter, we came across this simple non-verbal animation from 350.org. We hope you’ll agree 350 is a number really worth spreading.

Are you interested in sharpening your e-tutoring skills? Do you want to learn how to build and implement an online course?

Well here is your chance. At the end of September, the UNU Global Virtual University will co-organize two online courses together with Stord/Haugesund University College and the University of Agder in Norway.

e-teaching I is designed for budding online course tutors. e-teaching II involves learning how to design, build and run online courses. These are both part-time, for credit courses.

More information can be found at the University of Agder and there is a flyer that you can download which includes comments from previous course participants. The deadline for applications is 15 September 2008 and the courses begin on 17 September 2008.

The Media Studio team is just back from Sapporo where we joined people from over 60 countries in the iSummit’08. The yearly event is organized by iCommons, an organization at the forefront of an international movement that seeks to develop a united global commons by collaborating in open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.

The event was extremely inspiring for us. For a long time UNU Media Studio has been committed to the ideals of collaborative production and open sharing of content over the Internet. The iSummit’08 gave us the opportunity to get in touch with talented people from all over the world who share these ideals and who are finding creative ways to implement them in practical terms in a wide range of disciplines such as video production, education, publishing, business, law, photography, government, and fashion amongst others.

On 17 July, we organized a screening of the Wisdom Years documentary for staff from the UNU Centre and the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies. As you can see from the photo, we had a good turn out in the UNU Media Studio.

The Wisdom Years documentary offers glimpses into the urban lives of 70, 90 and 100 year old Japanese people and their secrets to maintaining physical, mental and social health.

After showing the documentary, there was a question and answers session. Overall, the feedback was very positive.

In order to promote the documentary, we have prepared six short interstituals and a sample is included below. We would like to hear from you about this topic and the documentary, so please feel free to submit your comments.

THE WISDOM YEARS - Silver College from UNUChannel on Vimeo.