Films of Note for 2008 - With Corless Content!

For this holiday season, check out these two movies that feature yours truly:

• Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding won 2nd place in the Mountain View Reads contest. This 10 minute film explains how the Global Understanding Institute was a directly causal result of reading Three Cups of Tea, the New York Times bestseller by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. My thanks for all our viewers and supporters! This film will be shown on Mountain View Cable (KMVT15).
  


• The Rehearsal, was a finalist for the Campus MovieFest (CMF) Western Regional Finals, under the category for the Elfenworks Social Justice award. We attended the screening at the Sundance Kibuki and the Grand Finale this past Sunday, and were able to speak for a few minutes about how and why we made the film, and what will come next. Congratulations and thank you to Franklin Pham, Harshi Lanjewar, Zaur Hasanov, all the narrators, artists of sound and visual images, and to everyone who, in five minutes, made the impossible possible!

While neither picture won top prize in its category, both were well-received and made it part-way up the hill of public recognition. These were the first formal films for both of us. While I had made a student video back in Beach Channel High School, shot a short movie at Carnegie Mellon as an undergrad, and did a podcast before for the Global Understanding Institute, this was the first time we had both entered a film contest for the public consideration of our work as an inspiration to social movement.

Both Franklin and I are now strategizing about the next films to lens and prizes to shoot for. How many frames per how many minutes and seconds, targeting our messages and our memes, our scripts and our themes.

Franklin is still working on a longer 20-30 minute interview-style movie, The American Dream. I am cooking up plans to do some documentary-style works on Armistice Day and the backgrounder video for the Global Understanding Movement and the Global Understanding Institute. There's also some video I'd like to do for 10 December 2008, the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).


Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

60th Anniversary Celebration - 10 December 2008 (United Nations)

For now, to get involved with celebrating the 60th Anniversary UDHR, see the United Nations’ own site for the event, join the Every Human Has Rights campaign and check out the Small Places Tour for Amnesty International.

So Much Life!

Folks,

For all those whom I have offered myself, committed to, and been helping, my life is getting suddenly more full than even three people might be able to handle. Because of that, I am sure some of you are going to slip off the plate. If that is the case, and if you want me to be there at a special time for a special event, please just call me!

Tonight alone, I have way too many things to get done in the span of an evening. I still have pressing matters from the entire past month on my plate.

“Prioritize! Make your life simpler! Be efficient!” I can hear the 7 Habits People who keep tidy neat desks and lives chiding me. Given what is occurring in the world, and given what I am looking to accomplish privately and professionally, it is far easier to just chuck things out of your mind than it is to physically or logistically chuck them out of your apartment, car, or schedule.

So, again, please forgive me my lapses and longer-than-expected deadlines. Again, if you need me, just call.

The good news is that many things are in play in my life, which for too long had remained stagnant or fallow. For many years, life was “famine,” now it is “feast.”

-Peter Corless.
petercorless@mac.com
650-906-3134 (mobile)

$100 for Wikimedia

Yay! Sue wrote to me! I had hoped she was going to. She’s the awesome new director of Wikimedia, the people who bring you Wikipedia.

From an objective view, I had to send her $100 for her time and attention span, which consisted of, basically, a form letter. If this was a romance, it would be like having to buy a date, or having to really wine-and-dine someone just for them to like you, I guess. Then again, she doesn’t know me from Adam. Not really. (C’est l’amour!)

Yet all of this is a very odd way of viewing the world. Are non-profits truly in it for the money? Well, they do have to “earn their daily bread” like the rest of it. And for many of them during this terrible time of economic crisis, they have to truly work and work hard for people’s support.

That was why I donated to Wikimedia. Because they do the good work. I hadn’t donated with the expectation of a letter from Sue, or that she’d really have any time for me at all. She’s working on a shoestring budget trying to hold Wikimedia together during a hard financial downturn worldwide.

I donated out of the goodness of my heart and out of my commitment for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects to deliver critical communal knowledge and information to the world. If you want your own “letter from Sue,” donate to Wikimedia too!

Hopefully in the future, I’ll get to actually talk to Sue. I actually did have that as a plan. I would actually like to tie the work of the Global Understanding movement towards the free, public information sources of Wikimedia. Maybe even get something back from the Wikimedia organization. A join venture. An incubator project. A new vision for the world.

Perhaps the next time we speak, it will not be a purely economic exchange based on shared mutual principles. More ideological. Business in the broader sense. Public benefits. Goals and visions.

For now, though, I, the Green Knight, am relishing the first letter I got from Sue Gardner. It was a very nice letter! Here it is:

From: donate@wikimedia.org
Subject: Thank you from the Wikimedia Foundation
Date: November 12, 2008 6:30:32 AM PST
To: petercorless@mac.com
Reply-To: donate@wikimedia.org

Dear Peter,

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, I wish to acknowledge and thank you for your gift of USD 100.00 to the Wikimedia Foundation, received on November 6, 2008. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Your generosity helps ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation continues to make human knowledge free and accessible to the world. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest and most popular collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's top ten most popular websites. Our work is important: we are grateful you have joined with us to help make it happen.

Sincerely Yours,

Sue Gardner
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable corporation with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. No goods or services were provided, in whole or in part, for this contribution. Tax-exempt number: 20-0049703

Onwards to adventure!

-Peter Corless.
petercorless@mac.com
650-906-3134 (mobile)

11/11 Armistice Day @ Global Understanding

This day we are commemorating the 90th Anniversary of World War I. Please join us!

Either post below, or call me to participate.

-Peter Corless.
petercorless@mac.com
650-906-3134 (mobile)

From Facebook:

[A friend] wonders how many centuries it will be before there's a female US president, and feels sure the rest of the world will not meet that with such approval. 3:20pm

Peter Corless at 3:29pm November 8

It will happen within the 21st Century. Remember the emancipation of slaves proceeded the suffragettes by some decades. But both worked hand-in-hand to get women the vote thereafter.

• 3 February 1870 - Black vote, 15th Amendment, barring racial discrimination

• 26 August 1920 - Women's vote; 19th Amendment, barring gender discrimination

Hence, about 50 years between the historical amendments to freedom. Thus look for the c. 2056 election cycle, if not well before. You could see it by 2012 or 2016.

Obama vs. McCain in Web 2.0 Social Networking

I found this from Roz Savage's blog. A very cool little article.

-Pete.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Sober Reflection on the Election of Barack Obama

What are the chances that Barack Obama will be assassinated? Today I spent some time researching the good, the bad, and the ugly truths on the topic of Presidential assassination, and specifically looking at the threats posed to President-Elect Obama.

The American Dream: MLK, Jr., Barack Obama, Abiola. They all have a dream. Do you?

Over at The American Dream Movie, please take time to review the speeches of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President-Elect Barack Obama. Then consider the emotional reaction of Abiola. She asks us to share our own dreams with her. What are yours?

This is Hilarious!

Meri shared this with me on Facebook. I thought you might like it too.

Flowers for Barack

Congratulations to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and all those who participated in this incredible election process. I wrote you a poem. Enjoy!

Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding

Please go to YouTube to watch and rate this video, so that I have a chance to win the Mountain View Reads contest for Three Cups of Tea!

If we succeed in making this the prize winner for 2008, I will take the $500 prize money and donate it to the foundation for the Global Understanding Institute.

Thank you so much for your support!

-Pete.