Indigenous Voices of Climate Change Film Festival @ COP15

Goddag! I am writing to you from Copenhagen, Denmark--home to the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference- which begins tomorrow. I'm here to support my colleague Citt Williams who for the past year has been tirelessly making films in some of the most remote parts of the world for the Indigenous Voices on Climate Change film festival which we have organized at the National Museum of Denmark.

The film festival which kicks off on Wednesday is a collection of not only UNU Media Studio produced documentaries, but stories form around the world on how local and indigenous people's are feeling the effects of changing climate. A short version of my most recently produced documentary on climate change adaptation strategies taking place in Bangladesh will be screened at this film festival.

Here are the basic details of the film festival or you can go straight to the Our World site for more info.

Indigenous voices on Climate Change Film Festival

National Museum of Denmark,Copenhagen

9th – 13th Dec

16.00 – 18.00

Free Admission

Fifteen of the films screened at the festival can be viewed in the customized youtube play-list below. Use the button second from the left to scroll through the films.

If you happen to catch this post and are in Copehagen, please do stop by and check out the films. Otherwise, follow my twitter feed for more regular posts on COP15 and the film festival.

"The Cove" @ Tokyo International Film Festival

October certainly seems like the month of film festivals. With the always excellent UNHCR refugee film festival out of the way, Tokyoites now have the Tokyo International Film Festival to look forward to. Last year TIFF went eco-friendly: laying out a green carpet, using green energy for screenings, and holding a symposium on environmental issues. Adding on to that, this year, TIFF has started the Green Carpet Club, of which you can become a member:


I'll be away for most the entire duration of the film festival :( but I have one particularly film that I want to encourage you wholeheartedly to see- "The Cove."


While I feel this trailer speaks for itself, I have to say of all the amazing films I have seen recently (Burma VJ, Heart of Jenin, Age of Stupid) this by far trumps them all. 

"The Cove" is an inspirational story about an individual giving everything in order to bring awareness to not only the plight of this dolphin slaughter but the many issues related, such as mercury poisoning and the selling dolphin meat disguised as whale. Ric O'Barry, once the dolphin trainer of the beloved American TV show Flipper, now sees it as his mission to curb the ever expanding dolphin industry.  

While protecting dolphins is not necessarily my number one priority, the shear passion that Ric O'Barry emits is earth-shatteringly inspiring. I was shaking when I had the opportunity to meet him after the screening of the film at the Foreign Correspondent's Press Club in Tokyo.

The screening of the film at TIFF is on Wendesday the 21st at 10:50am. Pre-sale tickets are already sold out but if you line up early ( I would get there by 8, but Im just a film freak) I'm sure you can get a chance to catch this controversial yet well produced and incredibly moving story.

2009 UNHCR Refugee Film Festival

I apologize for the lateness of this post but the 2009 UNHCR Refugee Film Festival  is underway. Please visit the home page for the line up.

I feel this year's selection is particularly outstanding and the festival organizers purposely choose to only screen 2o films this year, allowing them to bring the many of the  filmmakers over for Q & A sessions.

Of the films selected, I have already had the great pleasure of watching two of them. The highly anticipated Burma VJ which tells the stories of the courageous Burmese video journalists who risked everything to share the stories of the 2007 Saffron Revolution. Through clever and well placed reenactments, the raw footage is woven together to give one a very real picture of the incidents that occurred that Fall. 

The second film Heart of Jenin, tells the incredible journey of a Palestinian father makes a remarkable decision when his 11 year old son Ahmed is shot by Israeli soldiers. Ismahel (the father) decides to offer his son's organs to 6 israelis, giving a second chance to children while challenging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a personal level for some of the families.   

The film festival is on until this Friday.

Goodbye Providence, Hello Japan for now

My time in Providence is coming to an end. I haven't been as active blogging or involved in local peace activities as I would have liked but my life here has seemed to have taken its own course. As my first foray into doing more commercial work, I have to say that I have enjoyed it immensely. I don't know when I turned away from looking (or if I ever considered) working in the narrative storytelling side of this industry but the four months on this job has given me a greater appreciation for the talent, artistry and care that goes into producing what some might consider "fluff."

When I haven't been jaunting off to New York on the weekends, I've been traveling to New Hampshire. Swing-state New Hampshire that chose John McCain over GW Bush in the 2000 primaries. The New Hampshire that preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008 primaries. My friends and I have knocked on hundreds of doors, talking to locals about a much needed change in the white house, in America and in the world. And while it was my nerves that kept me up on the night of the 3rd, it was excitement of all the possibilities that kept me up on the 4th. I cannot express with enough eloquence what I believe Obama means to history and to what we all know is possible in our hearts for a better world. I also know that while he can be a great catalyst, he cannot single-handedly change the world. Each and everyone of us, regardless of our citizenship, has a chance to participate in fulfilling our true potential. I look forward to what the next eight years bring.

So I have a few things up my sleeves as I jump on a plane back to Japan. For several of them, it's still too early to post here (and I'm very excited for when I do) but I can share that my short film Peace Begins with Me and You will be at the Artivist film festival in Tokyo, Japan on Dec 12th. Here's the event link of FB. More details to come but here's a good start:

Artivist Film Festival Tokyo ・ アーティビスト映画祭 in 東京

Japanese premieres of 13 amazing short and feature films from around the world.

Friday, Dec. 12th at 7 P.M.
Saturday, Dec. 13th at 7 P.M.
Sunday, Dec. 14th All Day - 11 A.M. to 9 P.M.

12月12日（金）、19:00〜21:00
12月13日（土）、19:00〜21:00
12月14日（日）、11:00〜21:00

Detailed programming schedule to come.
プログラムはまもなく決定します。

Admission is FREE! Arrive early for good seats.

"ARTIVIST" is the only international Film Festival dedicated to raising awareness for the interdependence between Humanity, Animals, and the Environment. Since 2004, Artivist has screened more than 300 international films and has reached more than 25 Million People with its Public Relations Campaigns. Merging Art & Advocacy for Global Consciousness is our Mission. Artivist is a Charitable Organization endorsed by the UNITED NATIONS and the International NOBEL PRIZE.

「アーティビスト国際映画祭」は、人権・子供の 権利・動物の権利・環境保護への社会意識を高めることを目的とした初の映画祭で、今年で5周年をむかえます。2004年より通算2500万人以上に300 本以上の映画を紹介してきました。本映画祭の使命は、地球規模の問題への社会意識を高める一方で、国際的に活躍するアーティスト兼活動家（アクティビス ト）＝「アーティビスト」達の声を高めることです。アーティビストは、国連とノーベル平和賞からも支持を得る非営利団体です。

This year's films making Japanese premieres include:

One Water
They Turned Our Desert Into Water
Zeitgeist Addendum
Stolen Childhoods
Tibet: Beyond Fear
& many more

Map: http://tokio.cervantes.es/es/donde_esta_instituto_cervantes.htm

アクセス： http://tokio.cervantes.es/jp/microsite/mapa.htm

June 25: Refusenik at the Refugee Film Festival

The schedule for the Refugee Film festival has been announced! The documentary film that I worked on Refusenik will be screened on the 25th of June at the Instituto Cervantes de Tokio at 7:30 pm. I will be speaking in the Q&A after the screening, so please come and support me and this amazing documentary about a people's movement that spanned thirty years to bring freedom to the Soviet Jews. Also let me not forget to mention this screening and all other films as part of the Refugee Film fest is absolutely FREE!

Just to represent this information in easily retainable way:

What: Refusenik
When: Wed, June 25, 2008 at 19:30
How much: FREE!!!
Where: Instituto Cervantes de Tokio
2-9, Rokubancho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0085
Phone: 03 5210-1800
Directions: Nearest Station: Koujimachi Station. Subway Yurakcho Line
(3 minutes walk from Exit B5 towards Ichigaya)
Other stations: Ichigaya Station. JR Sobu Line, Subway Yurakcho Line, Namboku Line, Shinjuku Line (6 minute walk) Yotsuya Station. JR Chuo Line, JR Sobu Line, Subway Namboku Line, Shinjuku Line (7 minute walk)

There are also some other great films that I am really keen on seeing such as War/Dance, New Year Baby, NKBA Palestine 1984 and many others, so check out the schedule below.




Also, since this entire film festival is a free and open to the public, there will be a fundraiser pre-party at Seco Lounge on the 18th of June.
Refugee Film festival PreParty

Date: June 18th [Wed]

Time: 7pm to 11pm

Place: Seco Lounge, 03-6418-8141
http://www.secobar.jp/cat13/

Price: ¥1500 [does not include drink]

Live: Chaos Theory
Superfunktion
Rhythm Droid
West African performers to be announced

Painting: Amadou Tounkara (Senegal)

Visuals: M.M.M

Come, come, come!! xox

Pangaea Day

Last night at two in the morning, fifty people gathered at the United Nations University's Media Lab to participate in Pangaea Day. Pangaea Day was a world-wide internet-streaming film event in which 24 films were shared over the course of four hours in the name of global awareness and cultural understanding. Broadcast live across the globe, Japan had the lucky fortune of receiving the internet stream at 3 am and I came fully prepared with a sleeping bag to enjoy the cinematic spectacle.

The brains behind this event, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (producer of the documentary film Control Room) won the TED Prize of $100,000 for her idea that would change the world. The idea, Pangaea day, was a mix of films, music, and speakers who focused on our common humanity while celebrating our diversities. I particularly liked that the event started with planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, reminding us of the wonder and amazement that we as human beings have come to be on a tiny pale blue dot in the vast sea of the universe. Some of the other highlights included an Israeli mother,whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper, read a letter of reconciliation she wrote to the sniper's mother; artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris who created the website "We feel fine" which aggregates human emotions by scanning people's blogs and photos for how they are feeling; and former child soldier Ishmael Beah.

While it's certainly possible to call elements of the event bordering on cheesy and not one particular film stood out in my mind in being outstanding (I admit I did nap a little, so I may have missed somethings), what is incredible about this event is how many of us were able to come together to simultaneous share this movie-going experience. Thousands if not millions of people gathered in front of their computers or attended one of the major event spaces in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro.

Here we see technology as the grand facilitator of this global gathering. While using satellite television is not new, (ie. Spacebridges during the Height of the Cold War), today's streaming video capabilities brought this event into our internet-equipped private homes at an unprecedented scale. When the Laughter Yoga founder, Dr Madan Kataria asked everyone to stand and join him in laughter, all of us at the UNU media lab stood up and laughed. Can you visualize thousands of people around the world standing and laughing together at the same time? This is the power of technology. As I have witnessed over the past year through the cases of Dropping Knowledge and Hometown Baghdad, I see this event as just one more example of how technology can connects us in new and deeper ways, creating awareness of our unity as one world, and allowing us to join in conversation with one another.

It's not too late to watch the event and to continue the conversation online. Just go to Pangeaday.org .


Here's a clip of our Tokyo event:

Tokyo: Upcoming film festivals

For the globally conscious media junkie, there are a few film festivals coming to Tokyo that you should mark down on your calender.

1. The UNHCR Refugee Film Festival- June 2008 (The website is down at the moment...)
This will be the third year that the UNHCR Refugee film festival will be held in Tokyo. Not only do they showcase great films related to refugee issues around the world, the film festival is entirely free to the public! And on top of that a documentary film I worked on in LA (and that I have blogged about recently) Refusenik has been accepted to be screened. The date of the screening is yet TBD, but I'll be sure to update you on this. So at the very least, don't miss out on this one!

2. Tokyo Peace Film Festival- July 18-20th. This year the TPFF will be screening films such ash Iraq for Sale, American vs. Jon Lennon, and
「六ヶ所村通信」Rokkashoumura Tsushin- a film about Japan's newest nuclear reprocessing plant which has been a hot contested issues among anti-nuclear activist in Japan. I had the pleasure of meeting Kamanaka Hitomi, the director of the film, when she was a guest lecturer on Peace Boat's 53rd global voyage.


3. Artivist Film Festival- November 14-16, 2008
I first came across the Artivist film festival while I was in Los Angeles. The word Artivist came from the merging of Art + Activist, and thus their mission is to "strengthen the voice of the activist artists - 'Artivists' - while raising public awareness for social global causes." This film festival showcases stories on human rights, children's advocacy, environmental preservation and animal rights. My short film Peace Begins with Me and You was screened at their 2006 film festival at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood. I am currently submitting films to the Tokyo debut of this film festival, so wish me luck!

Refusenik film: Theater Release!

Hello~!
I am happy to announce a documentary film that I worked on back when I was living in LA will have a theatrical release. Please go to it if you can, not only for my sake, but because it is an inspiring story of a grassroots movement that spanned 30 years and which ultimately lead to the human rights victory and freedom of 2 million Soviet Jews.
To find more about the film, visit:
http://www.refusenikmovie.com/
and forward this information on!

love,
Megumi

----------------

RELEASE DATES:

SEATTLE

April 11th, 2008

Landmark Varsity Theatre

4329 University Way N.E.

Seattle, WA 98105

(206) 781-5755 http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/Seattle/VarsityTheatre.htm

SAN FRANCISCO

April 11th, 2008

Landmark Lumiere Theatre

1572 California St. at Polk

San Francisco, CA 94109

(415) 267-4893 http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/SanFrancisco/LumiereTheatre.htm

PORTLAND

April 18, 2008

Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10

846 SW Park Avenue

Portland, OR 97205

(503) 221-3280

NEW YORK

May 9th, 2008

The Quad Cinema

34 West 13th Street

New York, NY 10011

(212) 255-8800

link: http://www.quadcinema.com/

LOS ANGELES

May 23, 2008

Laemmle's Music Hall

9036 Wilshire Blvd.

Beverly Hills, CA 90211

(310) 274-6869

iGenius summit

iGenius is a online networking community of social entrepreneurs. Interested in making a difference in the world and connecting with other like minded people? Then their website might be the perfect place for you.

On March 13-16th, in Phuket Thailand, iGenius will be holding the iGenius World Summit to bring together members to meet face to face for the first time. The summit looks very interesting as former CNN international president Chris Cramer and Dave McQueen from Channel 4 will be giving presentations and on third day, the summit will specifically focus on the role media plays in social change.

They will be screening my short film, Peace Begins with Me and You as part of their social film festival but unfortunately for me my thesis research trip overlaps with their summit, and I couldn't quite justify the participation fee of 500GBP for just two days of the summit (and let's not forget the airfare.) Barry Crisp, a filmmaker from Japan, will be video documenting his journey to Phuket, so I look forward to hearing his report upon his return.

"View from the Bridge" film at Slamdance!

Hi, here is another update on a documentary film that I worked on while I was living in LA.

VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: STORIES FROM KOSOVO

Seven centuries of ethnic violence.

Seventy-eight days of NATO bombs.

One symbol of perilous peace.

The most critical political moment in Kosovo's history coincides with the SLAMDANCE 2008 PREMIERE of the groundbreaking documentary, VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: STORIES FROM KOSOVO. With Russia and the United States squaring off over the future of Kosovo, with the threat of renewed bloodshed looming over the province, and with all the world looking to Kosovo as a test-case for other war-torn areas, Kosovo is once again headline news. Within days or weeks, Kosovo may unilaterally declare independence from Serbia, a declaration that could re-ignite cold war tensions - or lead to civil war.

http://slamdance.bside.com/?_view=_filmdetails&extFilmId=viewfromabridge_slamdance

VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: STORIES FROM KOSOVO - the first feature documentary about post-war Kosovo. Confused with the earlier Balkan conflicts and overshadowed by Afghanistan and Iraq, Kosovo’s story may hold the most compelling lessons of all. Sometimes hopeful, sometimes tragic, the struggle to make peace in Kosovo exposes the human cost of the politics of hate, and reminds us that the ultimate responsibility for peace lies within us all.

SLAMDANCE 2008 SCREENINGS

Treasure Mountain Inn

255 Main Street, Park City

Monday, January 21, 7:00PM

Thursday, January 24 12:30PM

http://www.kosovomovie.com