Vida num dia

So the other night I planned on sleeping early until I saw that a documentary I had recently heard about can be watched on youtube for free. My plans to go to bed early had quickly evaporated and I ended up staying up to watch "Life in a Day." Life in a Day is a compilation of videos that people took on July 24th 2010. People were asked to record everything they did on that one particular day and send it in to Youtube. With 45,000 hours of footage from 80,000 submissions from 192 countries, the editing team was able to shorten it into a 90 minute documentary. I can only imagine how long that took.

There is no narration or story-line, it's simply people living their lives on July 24th and answering three main questions:

- What's your story?
- What do you have in your pockets?
- What do you fear?

From the goat herders to the traveler who's been biking around the world for the past 9 years, it was interesting getting a small glimpse into these people's lives. Although some parts are truly beautiful, the documentary doesn't try to sugar coat the world we live in. From the young boy who spends his days polishing shoes to earn money to the scenes where groups of men are beating up an individual, they all have a story.

The main message behind the documentary is:

...in a single day, most humans experience more similarities than differences - we wake up, eat, and go to sleep. Because it was shot by hundreds of filmmakers from around the world, there's a universality to the movie that demonstrates how we're all global siblings going about our day, it's just the culture that changes. (1)

I'm a huge fan of documentaries whether they are about history, technology, human rights, conspiracy, music, health...etc I enjoy being informed about what people are doing (or have done). If you enjoy watching Life in a Day, then you'll probably enjoy watching the documentary Babies (you'll like it, trust me).

I know, this blog was a little off from my life here in Brazil, but just wanted to share something I enjoy doing.