Peace One Day

Programme Notes

In 1999 Londoner and self-described failed actor Jeremy Gilley had a great idea. He was going to create a day on earth on which there would be no killing. But for peace to break out Gilley had to turn himself into a one-man lobbyist and political activist.

The film he made is a tour-de-force - especially remarkable is the way it combines his own unstoppable enthusiasm with his cold eye.

Peace One Day is a strange but winning documentary - an absorbing film, but also a not wholly discouraging commentary on our times.

Jeremy Gilley talks with Nick Fraser, Strand Editor, BBC Storyville, about the inspiration behind Peace One Day and the challenges of making the film...

Nick Fraser: When did you think of the initial idea?
Jeremy Gilley: I was at the Womad festival in 1998 - an amazing evening of music with cultures coming together. In that moment I thought I'd really love to do something about peace. The millennium was coming, this big moment that everyone was talking about, so I wanted to record something about the world and why we're not living peacefully. I was thinking about whether the United Nations could really unite the world and the more I thought about it the more I realised that there was no international day of peace.

NF: Why was it important to film your efforts?
JG: I'd read a book that said that the media had a real responsibility to society so I wondered if I could use my filmmaking skills and background to try and make a difference. My goal became to make a film that would try and establish the first ever day of peace on this planet with a fixed calendar date, voted by every head of state in the world. As I say at the beginning of the film, it was almost inconceivable that it would succeed. If it did then I knew I'd have an extraordinary film, but I also knew that if it failed it might make a profound statement about the state of the world.

NF: What were the biggest challenges?
JG: There were two challenges. One was penetrating the heart of the international community when you know nothing about the international community. I knew what the United Nations was but I knew nothing about its structure and how it works. That was a big obstacle. The second was how to logistically pull it off. I've spent close to £1.4 million to make this piece of work, whether it was given as a donation or sponsored. It's been a giant logistical rollercoaster of shooting 964 hours from every continent in the world over a six-year period of time.

On both accounts I reached out to people who knew more than me and appealed to people's humanity. Everyone wants peace; everyone wants a world where their children can grow up not being disempowered. Fortunately the idea made sense, so whether I needed a hotel, a plane or a camera people were willing to say yes. The UN wanted it as well. It made sense to Kofi Annan, to the Dalai Lama, to Shimon Peres, to Mary Robinson, to Amra Nousa.

NF: Did you get the impression that the idea reinvigorated their thoughts about the UN's role in the world?
JG: I think that perhaps it did. I saw a real passion and enthusiasm for a united world. These are people that have been in that system for a very long time and many of them, I'm sure, have become cynical about the opportunity that the UN has. But of course it has a massive one. I believe the UN is the closest thing we have to holding the global community together. In all my years of travel I've seen nothing that comes remotely close. These were amazing men and women who were really fired up. They made it a reality. I had an idea and presented it to the world but it's the world that created it. I pushed it with a camera, but it was the men and women of the UN system and the various civil servants in world governments who made it all possible. Brilliant!

NF: Was your former career as an actor useful?
JG: I think it probably was. When you walk on stage as an actor you naturally create a way of handling that and zoning into the moment to deliver what it is you've been paid to deliver. It's the same if you walk into a room with Kofi Annan or the Dalai Lama. If you have four-and-a-half minutes of their time with something important to say you can't waver. So it definitely helped not being worried and having the confidence to say what I needed to.

NF: One of the most interesting things in the film is that the press don't seem interested in what is such a positive idea. Why do you think that was?
JG: You asked me the same question at the Edinburgh Festival. I don't know why it is. It's just how it is. What we learnt was that if you involve celebrities then everything changes and the media do become interested. I was watching the news last night and seeing the aftermath of the killings in Russia, what's happening in Iraq, and the situation in Sudan. Each night we go home and watch 20 minutes of horror. I sat there and still had your question in my mind. I wondered if the reason why they show us these things is so we can feel alright, we can feel lucky as we watch everybody else's suffering. Is it to make us think that our country is better than everyone else's? I can't get my head round why they show us bad news all the time.

NF: 9/11 casts a long shadow over the film in many ways.
JG: It created an incredible moment in the film. Documentaries sometimes document incredible things and I think our film did that because the creation of the Day came four days before 9/11. It was a beautiful moment and probably the greatest day of my life. Then to be outside the United Nations on the morning of 11 September and have the cameras running and for the planes to hit the buildings, words can't really describe it. It was unbelievable. But as I say in the film I think it makes it all the more poignant. This is why we've got to come together. We've got to stand together as one. As Ahmad Fawzi from the UN says at the end of the film, we can't sit around in our armchairs and expect peace to come, because it won't. We need to support the governments of the world to create the world we want and I also think we need to empower the UN so that the secretariat, the people who work day in and day out, know that the people are behind them.

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