"One Day on Earth," a film created by Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Littman, documents one day in the life of humanity from every country on the planet.
More than 15,000 people contributed footage from their ethnic communities and helped to create a global patchwork of universal themes - including birth, love, creativity, war and death - all filmed on the same day, Oct. 10, 2010.
The film will be presented in 170 countries on Earth Day this Sunday, April 22. The filmmakers describe in their own words how the film was made.
According to director Kyle Ruddick, the idea for the film was inspired by music.
"You can take music from all over the world and you can combine it," he says, "and I thought that cinema should have something that immediate, that in the moment, and I had this idea that basically, what if as many people across the world filmed at the same time during one day."
The film is roughly based on the cycle of life.
"There is definitely a story to this movie, there is a narrative," Ruddick says. "But the way that we found it, was to really listen to all the perspectives and go through 3,000 hours of footage. It was a very laborious and enjoyable process, actually. It was about the discovery of what people have sent to us. And that was really an exciting process because every day you are discovering something new you didn’t know about that was beautiful and profound and from a place in the world you hadn’t seen before.”
For producer Brandon Littman, the logistics were a challenge.
"Filming in every country in the world requires a lot of friends and a lot of supporters," he says. "We spent long days and nights establishing communication from large organizations like the United Nations and the Red Cross and Red Crescent to smaller NGOs and filmmakers around the world. I think at the time there were about 15,000 members of 'One Day on Earth.'"
And what do filmmakers hope viewers will take away from the film?
"My hope is that people see this movie and they feel interconnected and they feel incredible gratitude for being alive and hope for the future," Ruddick says, "but they also feel responsibility to the challenges they face on a personal and global level."
