Day

June 24, 2010 must be the most recorded day ever. Worldwide, people responded to the call of Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald, to record a moment of that day, and share it on youtube. They got 4500 hours of material that they turned into the film Life in a Day.

I realized that one day on this world actually takes about 36 hours, from the time it turns 12 AM in the most eastern part of the world, untill it is 11.59 PM at the most western point. I have no idea where that may be, but one of the major candidates for the latter, has recently changed into a candidate for the first.



The day begins in the night, when people are drunk, sleeping, feeding their babies and watch the moon. And while the sun slowly rises and thousands of people put their feet on the floor, coffe gets made in so many different ways, people make breakfast, lovers wake up, the days slowly progresses. Between all the quick cut scenes, abruptly abandoned stories return and you start discovering a fragment of somebodies life.

People answer some simple questions in their own films, that unfold the simplicity of this world. What's in your pocket, is one of these questions. The answers? Money, phones, keys of a Lamborghinis, but also knives, guns, flags of all the countries from the ancestors of a (presumably) autistic woman and nothing. Or a stick of a of the Neem tree, that one can use as a tooth brush.

How simple is life? Some have everything, others nothing. It's simple and unfair. And even though no-one complaints, you can't deny this fact. When asked What do you love?, people answer: 'my family', 'my cat', 'cleaning very dirty things so you can see results', God, the Lord and our Saviour' and 'driving 150 miles an hour with my car'. We are all different, but we;re not. All over the world, people get married, they all eat their own strange foods, and everyone tries to make the best of it. The sick mother, with her battered body and her young son. The Berber and his fourteen children who live in a house without electricity or running water. The American girl whose husband fights in Afghanistan, the Korean guy who cycles the world and who gets emotional by Nepalese flies, because they are just as big as the flies in his home country.

And as the day progresses, and the evening falls, the Love Parade turns into a drama, fires burn down houses, people cry in their bed, the West celebrates life with dancing cheerleaders and half naked women, somewhere fireworks lighten the sky and in other places, a thunder storm does. As the moon rises, and it's 11.58, a girl films herself at the last minute. "I hoped that something special would happen today, so I could show the world that something special happens everyday somewhere. But nothing did. And even so, I still have the feeling that something special has happened.

Life in a day.