life in a day (miff film #15)

Faith restored! After the debacle of film #14, I was so, so happy after coming out of the screening of Life in a Day. Not only was my faith restored in the MIFF program, it was also restored in this crazy, digital age we live in.

The film, which was produced in conjunction with youtube, put out a call, asking people from around the world to film the day as it happened for them on July 24th, 2010. These budding filmmakers could then send in their footage and the most compelling and distinctive pieces would be used, and thus Life in a Day was born.

Kevin Macdonald, the director, introduced the film and mentioned that 14 Australian submissions made the cut. Pretty impressive considering around 4,500 hours of footage was submitted.

It’s so hard to pick my favourite parts of this documentary. They were all so brilliant and worked so well together. I didn’t feel like I was just watching snippets of home movies. The film was edited to show the full span of the day, starting with sunrise, and ending at sunset. The day was anchored by questions asked of the filmmakers, which were ‘what’s in your pocket?’, ‘what do you love?’, and ‘what do you hate?’.

I think the main reason I loved watching this documentary is because it showed me that if we work together, using all the social media currently available to us, we can create something with meaning, beauty, hopefulness and humour instead of wallowing in our own narcissism and shallowness.

5 stars!