Here's to a great Film Festival!

Congratulations and thank-you to Nick Halpin of Eyes Wide Open Photography and Paul and Sapora of Moonfire Studio for all their work in pulling together an inspiring and thought-provoking film festival for Gabriola this weekend.

I was lucky enough to be able to catch two films: A New World is Possible, and The Indigo Evolution. A New World is Possible documents the 2002 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where 51,000 people from 113 countries gathered in response to the elite World Economic Forum in New York. The Gabriola film festival coincided with this year's Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, where more than 100,000 now gather to share in collective action.

I had an interesting experience as i watched it and reflected on some of the converging currents of the previous week. On OSlist, Harrison and others were debating the merits of having regional OSonOS events (the annual international learning gathering of OS practitioners) and while all agreed that having an international event was important, and should be preserved to continue growing the community, the value of having more accessible regional events that could feed into or share learnings from the Int'l OSonOs was made clearer. Often in the past, as i have watched footage of events like the Social Forum, i have felt a need to be there, to be present and a part of it--but this time i had a different experience. As i looked around the room and saw neighbours and friends and folks i had opened space with around our community commons project, i felt already connected--already a well-woven strand in the web. The work we are doing on Gabriola is directly connected to the work of the Social Forum and the movements it represents. It was an amazing feeling of solidarity.

And the Indigo Evolution...well, having three indigo's at home, i thought i had better go have a look see. Well, to paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson, it's not that i believe in all of this, it's that i am simply willing to believe in it. (if you decide to check out the link, be warned this guy is a satirist, a trickster, a disrupter, and a discordian and totally unrepentant--not to mention an amazing Joyce scholar)