I want to take a moment to let you know about a project that I’ve been involved with that I believe is important and that you might find of interest. I bring it up now because the film that this project surrounds will be aired tonight in the US on PBS’s POV program. Click this link
I want to take a moment to let you know about a project that I’ve been involved with that I believe is important and that you might find of interest. I bring it up now because the film that this project surrounds will be aired tonight in the US on PBS’s POV program. Click this link to find your local listing.
The Reckoning is a documentary film about the battle for the International Criminal Court. The idea behind the court is simple: To end the repeated mass atrocities of the 20th century that continue today, perpetrators of crimes against humanity – no matter how powerful – must be held accountable for their actions.
However, putting that idea into action has not been so simple. Despite the need for international concerted action (109 countries have ratified), the court has had an uphill battle. The Bush administration was openly hostile to the court and the fact that it can issue arrest warrants but has no police force has left the court’s chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to struggle to put law into action.
When I went to the New York premier of the film at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Ben Ferencz, who was on the prosecution team at Nuremberg, was in the audience. His presence, which was met with a standing and emotional ovation, truly brought home the roots of the evils that the court stands against.
The other part of the project is IJCentral. A Website that brings together information and discussions on international justice. There you can take action too. Currently, the Obama Administration is deciding whether to support the International Criminal Court. At IJCentral you can weigh in to urge Obama to recognize the court. Click here to support the court.
Below you’ll find the trailer for the film and a synopsis. The links again are:
Late in the 20th century, in response to repeated mass atrocities around the world, more than 120 countries united to form the International Criminal Court (ICC)—the first permanent court created to prosecute perpetrators (no matter how powerful) of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The Reckoning follows dynamic ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and his team for 3 years across 4 continents as he issues arrest warrants for Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, puts Congolese warlords on trial, shakes up the Colombian justice system, and charges Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur, challenging the UN Security Council to arrest him. Building cases against genocidal criminals presents huge challenges, and the Prosecutor has a mandate but no police force. At every turn, he must pressure the international community to muster political will for the cause. Like a deft thriller, The Reckoning keeps you on the edge of your seat, in this case with two riveting dramas—the prosecution of unspeakable crimes and the ICC’s fight for efficacy in its nascent years. As this tiny court in The Hague struggles to change the world and forge a new paradigm for justice, innocent victims suffer and wait. Will the Prosecutor succeed? Will the world ensure that justice prevails?
Finally, the online and offline worlds take a big leap toward convergence with Google’s gmail going offline. It works through a program called Google Gears that stores your data on your browser. I’ve been using Google Gears for offline access my “Remember The Milk”
Finally, the online and offline worlds take a big leap toward convergence with Google’s gmail going offline. It works through a program called Google Gears that stores your data on your browser. I’ve been using Google Gears for offline access my “Remember The Milk” online to-do list app`for a while now and it works seamlessly. I also use a lot of Gmail “Labs” features – beta releases of features that may be included in the standard version at some point – and have had nary a problem.
“Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use ‘flaky connection mode,’ which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background.”
This is good news since I know some people who download their Gmail to other programs for offline access or don’t use Gmail at all because of that. So far, Google Apps email doesn’t have the feature – they tend to roll things out more slowly there – but if you’re like me, you have your Google Apps email forwarded into your Gmail account so you can get everything through one access point.
One other thing to note. When I went to start my offline setup it indicated that because of my volume of email (about 1gb) the program would only keep 3 months of emails, except for several folders, which it seemed to identify as useful on its own. It’s always amazing what you can do when you through billions of bucks at a problem!
We are very happy when we help bring great films to a new audience through the Web and working on The Greatest Silence, which won a Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, was a rewarding experience. Lisa Jackson’s film about the heinous crimes being committed against women in the Congo is an important work and hopefully through the Website Lisa’s team will enable more outreach and get the word out.
Lisa says: “Yeah Bud - you have done such an amazing job transforming our paleolithic site and turning it into something new, powerful, connecting and affecting. Thank you so much compadre.”
For this project we did a complete redesign of an existing site and incorporated a blog, screening calendar, outreach pages, Flash-based slide shows and trailer, all in an easily to update content management system.
The 2008 French Prizes for Best First Novels were announced in Paris on Tuesday, November 18th. Le Prix du Premier Roman Etranger (Best First Foreign Novel Prize) went to Dans la Ville des Veuves Intrépides (Tales from the Town of Widows) by Colombian author James Cañón.
Our client Min Jin Lee reports this on her blog: The U.S. paperback of Free Food for Millionaires will be released on April 9th. It has a new cover designed by the talented art director Anne Twomey of Grand Central, and copies should be at bookstores near you presently. There’s a new essay in VOGUE this month (April 2008) titled “Weighing In” in its Up Front column.
We are very happy when we help bring great films to a new audience through the Web and working on 
