Live from the Pyramids…

Last Saturday, I attended Pangea Day, the global film festival and live music event simulcast through the internet from six locations: LA, Rio, Mumbai, London, Kigali, and Cairo, Egypt.  The goal of Pangea Day was to unite people from around the globe through the power of film, using new technology for global storytelling on a large scale.  Surprisingly, it was pulled off with relatively few snags - there were only one or two breaks in the live feed.

But what started out as a normal film festival - with the requisite crowds of black-clad Bohemians smoking cigarettes through plastic holders - quickly turned into an open-air brouhaha the moment waiters notified the audience in the VIP section there was an open bar.  

My taxi dropped me off at the Mena House Oberoi Hotel just outside the Pyramid complex.  After convincing several police officers that my tickets - printed from the internet - were indeed real, I was allowed entry into the compound, only to find out I was still 9 kilometers away from the event.  No ride meant a long hike through the dark desert in Giza.

Luckily, a car pulled up beside me and offered to drive me into the party.  Even better, they had a VIP pass.  The pass let us park in the lot closer to the Pyramids.  More importantly, we were all granted access into the exclusive VIP section of the festival, a large area in the pit under the movie screen that sat around 150 people in plush, blue velvet couches in front of glass-topped tables.

Only the best for us VIPs.  Waiters with white gloves served chicken satay skewers and freshly squeezed watermelon juice.  Free bottles of Russian vodka and Moet were passed around like dollar bills at the Mexican border.  A man sitting near my table turned back a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch, claiming that it wasn’t good enough.  He ordered Chivas instead, and poured me a tall glass on the rocks.

Cheers to global poverty, eh?

With the caviar and French wine flowing strong, most of the VIPs walked around, mingled, and chatted up a storm throughout the night, making it virtually impossible to watch and appreciate the films - supposedly the point of the evening.

Ironically, the general audience sat in tightly squeezed rows of chairs on a riser above us, shivering in the cold desert wind.  The poor people immediately above us had a front-row view of our lavish spread, close enough that I could almost feel them drooling.  One of them was a journalist, and she wrote this article, a great account of what they went through.

The most disappointing thing about the night was the lack of emphasis on the actual films.  The majority seemed too short and too trite, barely even skimming the surface of any real story subjects.  Where were the hard hitting docs on stories that reflect the poverty, injustice, disaster and conflict that unfortunately ravages much of the world?  Instead we saw postcards from one girl’s summer vacation to Lebanon.  It was as if Pangea Day didn’t get enough submissions.

In between the short films, there were long musical performances, dull interviews, and incessant blabbering by half-witted, wannabe celebrity presenters that were way too excited that a live performance across six cities was actually taking place.  Too much weight was placed on celebrating the event itself, rather than the films and filmmakers.

Pangea Day was the brainchild of Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-American documentary filmmaker (”Control Room”, “Startup.com”) who I’ve always regarded as one of really great modern documentary filmmakers.  Although I’ve always admired Noujaim as an honest and uncompromising filmmaker, it seemed like Pangea Day pandered to advertisers and it’s own sense of self-worth.

Of course, this was the first ever year for the event.  There are kinks to work out and concepts to retool.  But at the end of the day, Pangea Day is a great concept for filmmakers and an amazing opportunity to expose the world to many of the stories that the fast-paced news markets aren’t covering.

Next year will be better.