Life in a day

In January 2011, Life in a Day came out. Youtube put it online for free in October 2011, which is when I first saw it. For those of you who do not know it; watch it. It is a film consisting of video clips shot by ordinary people from around the world, blended together to show life in a day. It truly does show life in a day; from births to deaths, from weddings to funerals, the mundane and the special, from city life to nature, from the joyful to the bereaved. There are some questions that are asked, and some stories come back several times, but otherwise it is a more or less chronological blend of events. The film is about 1.5 hours long, and I did not look at the clock or think about other things for the whole duration. There are not many things in this life which will keep your attention for 1.5 hours, but apparently, people just living their lives and sharing it with others will do it.
Yesterday evening, Britain in a Day came out, as part of the run-up to the British Olympics (there is a Youtube channel, but as far as I can see, you can't access it online yet). It is also 1.5 hours, and once again I watched everything without thinking too much about the outside world. Again, some stories come back several times, and some events, such as a football match between England and Spain, are shown from several angles; people inside the stadium, people watching it on tv, a man turning on the tv and his wife bickering about turning it of, etc. However, there were some fundamental differences with Life in a Day. Because it is only shot in Britain, you don't get the experience of seeing the sun come up in New Zealand while the day has not even started for most of the world, you don't see women pounding corn in Africa interspersed with our too-fast technology-crazy western world, and it does not end on the high, philosophical note as the original, with an American teenager crying in her car because her life was so ordinary for the day. Also, everything is in English, and even though there are many different religions and other culturally different groups in it, you don't get that feeling of diversity that Life in a Day gives you. You don't get the "this is what life is really like" but the "this is what Britain is really like" feeling. Which is exactly the point, and as I love British culture, this did not really matter.
But Life in a Day is definitely better. I think that we would all understand, appreciate, and accept each other and life in general more if everybody took 1.5 hours out of their day to watch it. It shows how we are all fundamentally united in our human lives. And looking at the comments on the Youtube film, I'm clearly not the only one who thinks this is a positive thing.