Friends, I've got two announcements. ____________________ * Server Migration We're moving our lists over to Yahoo, because maintaining our own servers is becoming too burdensome. The websites will remain as they have been, with the same URLs. We won't be using the web features of Yahoo, at least not at the beginning. I've been posting to the yahoo lists in parallel with our current lists, and it has been working just fine. There's no big hurry, but when you get a chance, please subscribe to the new lists by sending a message to one or more of these addresses: •••@••.••• newslog •••@••.••• The current cj and renaissance-network lists will be merged into the new cyberjournal list. The postings to those lists have been identical for quite some time now. You'll get back a confirmation message, just as with the current lists. You simply reply to the confirmation message (using the same account that you subscribed from), and that will subscribe you. Finally you'll get a Welcome message. Once you get the Welcome message, you can unsubscribe from the current lists by sending a message to one or more of these addresses, and replying to the confirmation message. •••@••.••• •••@••.••• •••@••.••• Let me know if you have any problems. ____________________ * Documentary Project: "An Inconvenient Necessity" This is my next 'big project', after the ETM book. It's an ambitious project, with some innovative aspects, but it's doable and it makes sense -- both for 'the movement' and commercially. It's a film within a film... - The inner film The inner film is a documentary about sustainability (ie, the 'inconvenient necessity'). We'll have about five field locations, in South America, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. We'll be looking at the global crises being caused by industrial food production, as regards topsoil depletion, salinization, desertification, fishing-stock losses, water-table depletion, pesticides & other health issues, factory farming, social displacement, etc. Forget about peak oil, or global warming, this is about peak food and immediate survival. At each location as well, we'll be looking at sites where we can find organic, small-scale, and traditional modes of food production. We'll be comparing the productivity per acre, and per unit of water, energy, and petroleum products. We'll be trying to make it clear that sustainability isn't a vision, it's a necessity, and it's less about sacrifice than about ending needless waste. There will also be interviews with various experts, looking at the overall picture, and bringing in the political angle, eg privatization, IMF, World Bank, etc. It will be important to have a well-known personality / star to narrate. That is what can bring in big audiences, and hence it also enables getting the financing. I'm thinking of someone like Bruce Willits or George Clooney, who can appeal to audiences across the board, and who would be likely to be interested in this kind of project. The inner film is a complete work and could be released on its own, in the same circuits where we've seen Michael Moore's material and Gore's film. But that's not the plan. The audience will see the whole documentary, in sequence, but framed within the outer documentary.... - the outer film The outer film observes a group of people who have come together to watch "An Inconvenient Necessity", and who will be pausing the DVD at various points to talk about their reactions. The audience and the group are watching the same film together at the same time, and the audience gets to 'experience' how the group responds. The learning that takes place in the group, and the development of their dialog, become part of the dramatic progression of the overall presentation, interspersed with the dramatic progression in the inner film. The group participants are not actors, and they have no script. The are selected so as to provide diversity, geographically, ideologically, genderwise, agewise, etc., and on the basis of being articulate, able to listen, etc. They will be watching and discussing the documentary over a period of a few days, so their dialog will be evolving considerably, and that will be edited down to short segments of highlights, but with smooth transitions. I don't imagine the dialog clips will total more than about 30-40 minutes, but a lot will be going on in that time. There will be a facilitator with the group, using Dynamic Facilitation. We won't be making a big deal about process, we'll just be showing it in action, mostly showing what the group is saying, and only occasionally showing the facilitator's role. Given the way participants will be selected, and the fact that they won't mind long sessions (they're getting paid beginning-actor rates), and given the power of DF, we can expect the dialog to develop in very interesting ways. There are two purposes for the outer film. One purpose is to try to break through the 'spectator barrier', where we see a film 'out there', as a consumer, and go away not knowing how to integrate what we've seen, and having no idea of what we might do to be 'part of the solution'. The real responses of the ordinary people in the group will hopefully bring the impact of the inner film more inside the 'personal space' of the audience, and people will be able to identify with some of the participants, as they do with actors in a drama. The idea, we might say, is to 'deepen the catharsis'. The other purpose of the outer film is to expose people to the power of dialog, and expand their understanding of what is possible among people. This will come automatically, as a by-product of the overall presentation, but it will in some sense be the most important achievement of the project. The dialog group is a microcosm of 'we the people', and their ability to reach useful conclusions together in the face of difficult problems sows the seed of 'we all could do that' in the minds of the audience. At a dramatic level, the outcome of the dialog becomes a 'happy ending' counterpoint to the dismal message of 'peak food'. All problems change character when one begins to feel empowered to do something about them. ____________________ As usual, your feedback and ideas are welcome. Particularly if you have contacts in the film industry, or if you know of good shooting locations. that's all folks, richard -- -------------------------------------------------------- Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html Subscribe cyberjournal list: •••@••.••• (send blank message) cyberjournal blog (join in): http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Moderator: •••@••.••• (comments welcome)
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