Two movies available online.

I've put two rather large movie files online for people to enjoy.

The first one I'll mention is the video I took at the World Expo 2008 in Zaragossa, Spain. This is an 18.5 minute film of the large multimedia presentation made each night on the Ebro River. You can watch it here (.mov file 45.1 MB, will stream in most browsers). I found it profoundly moving, like Gorecki's Third Symphony. It contains a good collection of images, and offers some interesting combinations of music and visuals. I believe the people shown from about 5 minutes to 6.5 minutes into it are victims of diseases brought on by environmental contamination.
We saw the show on a Thursday and a Friday night, and there were tremendous crowds of all ages present. I was somewhat impressed that all sorts of families from all over Spain and Europe, even from all over the whole world were coming to see this program. I wonder if a show like this could be presented at one of the Disney theme parks as an evening program before the nightly fireworks. Somehow I can't imagine that sort of thing happening just yet.

The second film I've put up is a sort of slide-show with readings and music I made in 2006 to express my feelings about war. Rather than watch it on-line, if you have space for a 206 MB file on your hard-drive, I suggest you download the film as a .mov file [205.8 MB], which means you should right-click (or hold down the control key as you click, Mac users) on the link to the film. That will bring up a little window in your browser and you can tell the browser to download the linked file). If you try to view it in a browser you'll need to wait about four minutes for it to start playing if you have a fast connection. If your connection is slow I can't guess how long it would take to load it into a browser to play it. It's a 43 minute film.
This film about peace and war tries to create a strong feeling by using music, images of war, and writing about war and peace, some of it from a religious or idealistic perspective about how horrible war is. I used quotations from various books that have informed my opinions about war and combined with images of war. I used many color photographs from World War I and II. You can also see many of the "Disasters of War" sketches by Goya. Most of the quotations are taken from a talk that 'Abdu'l-Baha gave during the summer of 1914, just before/as World War I was starting. The film is certainly PG-13, as there are many scenes of corpses. Some of the stories remind me of the stories my Great-Grandfather told me about his time in France in 1918.

- Eric