The Premise

WE_the_movie is about people and networks that are triggering the GREATER WE. Technology has changed all our lives. And it will continue to do so. Even faster. More than ever we are all connected. Those networks with weak and strong ties seem to create new patterns. Patterns we don’t know or only partially know from the non-digital world. The movement is roughly from a ME to a WE-society. WE_the_movie is an inquiry into who and what is triggering the GREATER WE. Who are these people? Which are the networks? What is triggering them? Who are behind them? How do they connect and interact? How can WE change and shape our planet into new forms and concepts? What are the impacts for society? For companies? For governemnets? For the people?

The Genre

A very common genre of documentary filmmaking is Oral History. You could call WE_the_movie Oral Futurology. Futurology is the science, art and practice of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. A key part of this process is understanding the potential future impact of decisions made by individuals, organisations and governments. “Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you.” Patrick Dixon, author of Futurewise

Process and Structure

Since WE_the_movie is about networking it can’t be made without the networks. This is why the initial funding and developing of the content is done online. We launched a crowd funding website to start the initial phase. It went online November 2011. Through this website we hope to attract bigger players in order to finance the final film.

The characters of the film have been involved in different forms of WE for years: in culture, society, arts, education, politics, religion and economy. They work at the cutting edge of these topics, they are visionaries and innovators, gathered from all over the world. We will find them through our own networks but also through crowd sourcing on the Internet. Everyone can make suggestions.

We will make a Future Wheel with the central theme: WE.

The Future Wheel is an instrument to visualize the direct and indirect consequences of a particular change or development. The Future Wheel is a way to organize our thinking and questioning of the future – a kind of structured brainstorming.

To start a Future Wheel the central term describing the change is positioned in its center. Then, events or consequences following directly from that development are positioned around it. Next, the (indirect) consequences of the direct consequences are positioned around the first level consequences. The terms may be connected as nodes in a tree (or even a web). The levels will often be marked by concentric circles.

Visualization (WEsualizations)

The film will include many WEsualizations. The obvious ones like images of the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, the Internet itself. But also technological and biological WE structures: murmurations, the flocking of sparrows, schools of fish, stars and molecules and how they work together, electricity circuits, subway maps, stock markets, mobile communities, artworks, GPS-trackings etc. We will ask our followers online to come up with suggestions. We even ask them to film their own experience and feeling of the WE. In this way everyone can participate in WE_the_movie. We aim for a mind-blowing and conciousness awakening set of associative stream of images that are interlinked with the stories people will tell us.

Storyline

The storyline will develop as drawn above in the Future Wheel. The film will start with a collection of images of the WE in the last 10 years, and we build from there to different storylines. These are scheduled for now in the same way as the Future Wheel.

Some examples: We might start with the burning of Bouazizi, the man who lighted the flame in the Arab Spring. This would be the center, core, the middle circle, the trend so to speak. How is it possible that one man in Tunesia burning himself in a village inspired a WE that overthrew a government? This question will inspire the next round of circles. We will go to the people who are already working for years in both online and offline networks to encourage social change. For instance Global Voices, a community of more than 500 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. We’ll pick one or two people and follow their preparations for their summit in Nairobi, June 2012. We will hear how they work and what drives them. We will than film in Nairobi and find new people overthere from other networks whom we can follow, but also scientists like Zeynep Tufekci who study these networks for years and can make historic references, whom we can pick up with our cameras. These are the circles in the third round of the Future Wheel. Harvard University with its Berkman Institute is a key force behind the WE. As is the University of Bangelore. We then will film some people in those institutions and learn how technology combined with activism has been working for years, maybe decades to realize a greater WE. We end with the big institutions.

A second storyline will begin with images from Occupy Wallstreet (central circle) We will interview a few key figures who will lead us to the financial world. We will then go to economists who are trying to get this WE feeling in the financial world (second circle). There a quite a few brilliant and enlightend economists and CEO’s working on the WE who are backed by big institutions. We will follow those traces. They will talk about bankers and losers (third circle). We will also go to China and interview Sharism. Isaac Mao, the so called first blogger in China and his partner Clement Renaud who came up with a new model called Sharism. We will end this line again back to the man in the street.

A third storyline could begin with some “Hole in the Wall” footage, the famous project of Dr. Sugata Mitra, Chief Scientist at NIIT in India. His project shows how childeren enable themselves and learn in self-organizing groups. With him we enter the field of education where also Sir Ken Robinson will be part of it. He is a TED rock star with his talk on “How Schools Kill Creativity”. How can we use and create the GREATER WE in education?

Another storyline could follow physicists, philosophers and artists trying to come up with models to explain the GREATER WE.

All through the film there will be moments in which “enemies” of the WE will talk. There are very heated opinions about the WE. There are people who hate Internet utopia, hate Occupy, hate new forms of political organization. Sometimes this stems from arrogance or ignorance. But a lot of times there is a cynical person behind the hate, because he or she was in a revolution before and everything that was believed and promised failed to become reality. People who were WE activists in the sixties, or in the 90′s in Eastern Europe. People who were riding the waves on the Internet bubble before it exploded. The- sometimes- dramatic stories of these people will give the film its contrast and place the idealism in historical context. Because some of their peers are now the teachers of the new greater WE, and we will follow them with our camera’s around the world.

Audience

Our main audience are ordinary people. People like you and me. Mainstream. No elites. We want to tell them easy to understand stories about the Web. How it’s influencing their daily lives, what are its impacts in the way we live, work, learn and enjoy. We want to make clear that it is much much more than facebook or twitter. The stories will show the transformative power of the Web, and how this is influencing our own transformations. We think there will be a large International audience for this film, in the West as well as in the East. It could be played in theaters, on TV and on the web. The distribution therefore has to be planned very well. The final version can be shown at Film festivals around the world but also at international conferences like Picnic, Al Jazeera Forum, Cannes MIPCOM, ArtsElectronica etc.

Excerpts will taken from the film and we produce trailers on specific topics (companies, politics, education ….) to target special audiences, like for instance leaders and politicians.

Timeline

November and December 2011 will be used to receive initial funding. We launched the website and produced two trailers.

In June 2012 there will be a big bloggers conference in Nairobi where we will film with a crew. Before that we have to see which keyfigures in the networks we will follow with our cameras. We have some ideas ourselves but we also depend on our followers online to come up with their suggestions. It would be helpful if we can do this shoot in cooperation with a TV network. However it must be understood that the rights will be creative commons.

We will also ask befriended and unknown filmers to come up with footage about the WE and we will edit this in the final film. After July 2012 we plan on some additional shooting – to complete what we already gathered. Autumn 2012 is reserved now for the first editing. After this we will decide what stories we need more to complete the first part of the movie. We will start funding and organizing this and will shoot the first half of 2013. After that will be another round of editing. Film could be ready Summer 2013.

It’s very well possible that we are only speaking here about WE_the_movie part one. Considering the acceleration in different WE movements, there could be additional WE_the_movie parts in and after 2013 – one focussing for example on government and politics, another one on companies, a third one on society …

Production

Like everything else concerning We-the-movie, the organization for the production has to agree and like the Creative Commons idea. There is no profit to make, but a lot of sharing to do. This means that everything, from contracts to finance, and from quit claims to planning and funding, will be different than with “ordinary” films. The production will be very important however to keep all the lines going and arrange general decisions. There should be a need and desire to find other ways and solutions to produce and distribute a film.

We – Manifesto

we observes and leads the way into a participatory future. ➟ we means emergent net culture. ➟ we is positively disruptive. ➟ we is an attitude. ➟ we means sharing. ➟ we means collaboration. ➟ we believes in collective intelligence. ➟ we means holistic and network thinking. ➟ we is smart because of the network of “Yous”. ➟ we is more than you & I. ➟ we means responsibility. ➟ we doesn’t mean control. ➟ we means a real change in power. ➟ we doesn’t mean copyright but creative commons. ➟ we is diversity and harmony. ➟ we means partnership. ➟ we connects people, ideas and thoughts around the globe. ➟ we is authentic, humane, creative. ➟ we believes in the freedom of speech and ideas. ➟ we means openness and transparency. ➟ we points to potential uses of social media. ➟ we detects trends. ➟ we reflects and discusses the experiences, related to social media. ➟ we describes the transformative nature of social media in economy, society and culture. ➟ we encourages collective action. ➟ we is open to authors around the globe. ➟ we engages into the current and future developments driven by social media. ➟ we embraces cultural diversity.➟ we stands for a community of believers. Believers who are convinced that the Internet has the capacity to make the world a better place. A change for the good! ➟ So the We-movie will be about this change. ➟ we looks at it from different point of views: culture, society, arts, education, politics, religion and economy. Our main characters in the film mainly work at the cutting edge of these topics, they are visionaires and innovators, gathered from all over the world.

Personal motivation, co-workers of WE_the_movie

Alwine van Heemstra

“Why am I doing this? I strongly believe in synthesis through diversity. I think it is possible to make a link with anyone if you put an effort to it, at least in my experience. The bigger my resistance and the effort I need to put in, because for instance someone has a very different view, belief, background, the stronger the impact and the satisfaction. For me the WE film is all about impact through connection. Building a new foundation for a new world based on trust, care, love and freedom through guts. It is easy to turn my back to the unknown, it is more challanging to confront it. I try to contribute to connections between the unknown. I think WE_the_movie is all about this, connecting diverse worlds – creating understanding and synthesism. Feeling responsible for each other because we are all a link of the whole.”

Maartje Nevejan

“One of the deepest pains we have is that of beiing seperated. Seperated from the rest, from the whole. We experience this on many levels all through our lives. The sadness, fear, anger and loneliness can be transformed however in connecting(back) to what we have in common, in what unites us as humans on this planet. A lot of my work originates from dealing with the pain of seperation and through this finding back the inspiration to collaborate,unite and feeling what binds us together. To be part of something bigger. Not something seperate or above us, but something in which we are included. A bigger WE. While interviewing (angry and passionate) young people all over the world for my films http://www.couscousglobal.com/page/81/en , I found a common ground whether in China, USA, Iran, Africa or Europe there is a growing awareness that we do not want to invest or been manipulated anymore into the seperateness. It might pay off on the short term but in the long run we have to focus on our common ground and that is we are all living on this planet together and we are more and more aware of our interdependency. The Internet and social media are inspiring and accelarating this and so paradoxely enough technology gives us our humanity back. I love to be part of this growing awareness and therefore I Love to be part of We-the-movie.”

Ulrike Reinhard

“Even though I am not a digital native, I have been online for 25 years. I got my first email account in 1987 at The Well. At that time I was living in Sausalito California right next to the offices of The Whole Earth Catalogue and The Well. The forefront of the Web in its early days. I breathed their spirit – feeling in my bones that we were up to something completely new. The very first attempts of community building and creating something collectively which a person alone could never do. I was intoxicated by this idea.

Today the internet is our society’s dominant platform. So I think it’s absolutely fundamental that we understand it. But not only us who live with it – I want our politicians, leaders and elites to share this understanding! Because they’re the ones who decide on our future, the ones who’ll make bad decisions and bad policies if they don’t get it!

This means we need to spread the message and get it out of the geek-ghettos. We need to show that it’s not just about building cool stuff but about understanding how our society and our future will change. With all the consequences and insecurity this change will bring with it.

The wider purpose of the Web is to build a better world. And to build a better world we need to go mainstream! And a movie is mainstream.

This is why I decided to go with some friends on the journey: WE_The_Movie. We want to show and tell personal stories of how people everywhere are striving to use the internet to change the world for the good.”

Dominik Wind

“When I was in Samoa in the Southern Pacific back in 1999 I was quite sure that I found paradise. The lush, opulent vegetation, white sandy beaches, vulcanos, rainforests and cristal clear water in the lagoon, corals, starfishes and immense shoals of fish. But already back then the natives I was living with were highly alert: The village elder told me something was wrong with the sea and the winds, that something was changing. They said “Mother Earth” was screaming in pain and was about to die because of our “Western” consumption.

Today I know we have gone way too far. It´s a horrifying scientific fact that our planet´s ecosystem will collapse within my lifetime. “With just 10 more years of “business as usual” emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, it becomes impractical to avoid “disastrous effects” [on climate and environment]. That´s what NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute already said in 2007.

Our current way of living is based on the fundamentally flawed ideas of individualism, success and endless growth withour any restrictions. It´s all about ME being in this world, while the ME is very often reduced to be nothing else but a “consumer”.

The urgent change needed can’t be tackled by individuals alone. It needs a very strong WE in which every individual (=ME) takes responsibility: WE need to connect, to listen to and to understand each other. WE need to inspire, to learn from and to change with each other. WE have to bring in our creativity, intelligence and action to save the basis of our living. WE cannot wait for institutions and those in power, they´ll join in later anyways. WE have to start right away.

WE can’t wait for institutions and our political leaders any longer. They failed so far or were simple too slow. WE have to start right away. I feel obliged to spread this message. And I hope WE_the_movie will accelerate the change we need. To save us. To save “Mother Earth”. It´s time.”