Life in a Day is a documentary film consisting of YouTube videos from all around the world, all shot on July 24, 2010, which was a Saturday and a day of a full moon. The video above is the trailer and the one below is the full 95-minute film. It’s been around a long time, but I only just now came across it. That’s true of a lot of my posts.
It’s consists of clips taken from 81,000 videos shot by volunteers in 192 countries, adding up to 4,500 hours of footage.
There are some remarkable episodes—a Slovak filmmaker in Kathmandu, Nepal, interviewing a Korean man who is bicycling around the world; a Peruvian shoeshine boy hustling to make a living, and confessing the thing he likes best is his laptop; an acrobatic Russian making Moscow his playground.
But most of it is people in different places living their everyday lives and answering one of three questions: What do you love? What do you fear? What’s in your pockets? The filmmaker doesn’t make any overall sociological or political point, except the diversity and unity of the human race. It’s a joyful movie. The musical score adds a lot to it.
Ninety-five minutes is a long time to watch a movie on a computer screen, but you don’t have to watch it all at one. It took me about five or ten minutes to get into the film, but, when I did, I watched through till the end.
Part of the purpose of making the film was to celebrate the fifth anniversary of YouTube. It was released on YouTube and, so far as I know, has never been shown in theaters.