Category: movie

film, movie, New York, news, Pangea Day, TED

Tribeca Film Festival Talk: Pangea Day

Christa Avampato

Every year, TED gives a set of honorees a “prize” – the chance to articulate their wish for the world. Sometimes the world is fortunate enough to witness the work that brings one of these wishes to life. May 10th will be a day that one of those prizes comes into being.


Two years ago TED awarded its annual prize to Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-born film maker best known for her document “Control Room” which chronicles the role of media in war. Her TED wish was that the whole world would have the opportunity to sit down together at a common time for several hours to enjoy a set of short films that represented universal themes. Pangea Day, May 10th, will provide that opportunity. 


The Tribeca Film Festival hosted a discussion this week to promote Pangea Day. Held at the Director’s Guild Theatre, Chris Anderson, the host of TED, moderated a panel that included Jehane, Christiane Amanpour, the famed CNN journalist, and Gideon Yago, the journalist largely credited with bringing the world’s news to MTV. This 90 minutes gave me such hope for the future of this world, and the role that art, and particularly film, can play in bringing about social justice and mutual understanding. As Christiane Amanpour so brilliantly stated, “An attempt to understand someone else is the soul of diplomacy.”


From the talk, the most poignant and powerful sentiment communicated by the films of Pangea Day is empathy. For example, an agency called Johannes Leonardo created a set of films that feature a choir of one nationality singing the national anthem of another nation. France sings US. US sings Mexico. Kenya sings India. The film of France singing the US was so powerful that I teared up and actually shivered. That feeling of compassion through music was indescribable.


Many of the short films are up on YouTube, and they will all be available on the Pangea website on May 11th. Not surprisingly, Jehane means “world” in Farsi. And in her closing thoughts of the talk she provided perhaps the best quote of empathy and understanding I have ever heard. “If we could read the diaries of our enemies we would find enough pain and sorrow to extinguish all hostility.” It’s my hope that the short films on Pangea Day will start us down that road.       

experience, movie

Learning from Charlie Wilson

Christa Avampato

Christmas night I went to see Charlie Wilson’s War with my mom. We both loved the movie. All of the Golden Globe nominations are quite well-deserved. The most poignant point in the film came at the very end with a quote that helped me to apply the lessons of Charlie Wilson to my own life.

After all is said and done, Charlie Wilson is credited with saying, “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. Then we f***ed up the endgame.” He’s right. The United States spent about $500,000,000, and then matched by the Saudis for a combined totally of $1 billion to aid the mujaheddin and defeat the Soviets. Once the Soviets were defeated, the country of Afghanistan was in shambles. We could scrape together half a billion dollars for ammunition and weapons though we couldn’t come up with $1 million dollars to build schools. As a result, the young population of Afghanistan grew poorer and angrier. The result was what we see today, and try as we might to deny it, we are at the very least partially to blame. We cared about winning the battle though not about winning the war, and as a result, we’re still fighting. The seeds of our problems today in that area of the world were planted by our own actions in the 1980’s.

This quote at the end of the movie made me consider how I look at situations in my own life when I put up so much energy and effort at the start and then question whether or not to put forward another small amount to complete a job in the best way possible. I am in no way suggesting that any aspect of my life is even remotely close in gravity to what the U.S. faced in the situation that the movie captures. That would be absurd.

What’s worth considering is whether or not we consciously acknowledge that we are in the game for the long haul. Are we willing to see a project through to completion to make sure that it is done as well as possible? Are willing to do what it takes to protect our investment of time, effort, and heart? If yes, then proceed. And if not, then maybe it’s best to not even begin and place our energies elsewhere.

The photo above can be found at http://www.worstpreviews.com/images/photos/charliewilsonswar/charliewilsonswar3.jpg