Interview with Jeremy Gilley, Filmmaker and Visionary

FOREWORD

“The Day After Peace” charts the remarkable 10-year journey of award-winning filmmaker Jeremy Gilley to establish an annual Peace Day. Before setting out on his near impossible mission in 1999, Jeremy Gilley was an actor. At some point, he became disillusioned with his work and decided to fight for a higher goal. His idea was to create one Peace Day every year, when all wars would stop and no acts of violence would be conducted. What seemed an unachievable and foolishly idealistic project for some was for Jeremy a great and noble challenge which he pursued – and continues to pursue – with passion, never ceasing energy and unabated optimism.

He started by discovering that a UN International Peace Day already existed, but almost nobody knew about it. What he first tried to do – and eventually achieved – was to prompt people around the world to observe this day on a fixed date – 21 September. For that, he had to travel around the world – from New York to Israel to Costa Rica and speak to an astounding amount of people, including former Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan, various other UN officials, Nobel Prize winners such as the Dalai Lama and world leaders like Shimon Peres, then President of Israel. He also founded Peace One Day, a non-profit organisation created to help promote awareness on his project and engage all sectors of society in observance of Peace Day on 21 September every year.

The next step was to make sure that global ceasefire and non-violence were actually put into practice – the most difficult task in the process. Mr. Gilley got the help of famous actors like Jude Law and Angelina Jolie and well-reputed corporations – Coca-Cola, Puma, Addidas etc. - to send his message all around the globe, but his mission is not over. Even today, after 10 years of struggle, much is yet to be achieved and Jeremy, together with Peace One Day, is still working hard to this purpose.

Mr. Gilley spared no effort to achieve his goal – from risking his life in the war zones of Afghanistan to cutting his once-shoulder-length hair, the price of credibility. Understanding the potential of film to positively affect people and create change in the world, he caught on camera all the stages of his long and strenuous quest - every journey made, every country visited and every person met. The result – “The Day After Peace” - is a moving testimony to the perseverance of the human spirit, a film which gives its viewers an amazing feeling of potency and self-esteem.


INTERVIEW

First I would like to ask you what are your short-term and long-term goals?

The short-term goal right now is actually about strategy and planning. My goal is to make sure that the strategic initiatives and campaigns and processes that we will run are obviously well organized and well executed and funded in order for us to be able to achieve the longer-term plan, which of course is to institutionalize the 21st of September. And when I say institutionalize I mean make it a day which is self-sustaining. It won’t really matter who Jeremy is or Peace One Day is; it’ll be the Peace Day for the world and people will do things. Children will be vaccinated, young people will do things in schools, families will come together, people will say sorry… It’ll be a day which unites our world in a way that we’ve never been united before and that’s a phenomenal and wonderful opportunity that the day represents. So the long-term plan, which is the most important plan, is to quite simply make the day self-sustaining, inform the individuals that the day exists. And we predict that by 2012 three billion people will have been informed of the day’s existence.

What are you planning on doing after this?

Well, I’m going to lie on the beach for a long time I think!

You deserve it! The next question we would like to ask you is: What was the greatest challenge you encountered in your quest to create an international day of peace?

There are stages in the process, but it relates directly to creating the day. The greatest challenge was of course to find a country, a member state that was willing to sponsor the resolution to establish a day of peace with a fixed calendar date, and also be a ceasefire none-violence day. Those are the two fundamental points. The most important thing to talk about is that the peace-day we now have has a fixed calendar date, the 21st of September, and is a day of ceasefire and none-violence, which is fundamentally important to the day’s success. The reason why, I think you’ll see, is that this is definitely recognized globally, by every human being on the planet in the not-so-distant future.

So the greatest challenge was finding a government to put that resolution forward and then find another government, another member state to co-sponsor the resolution. As you know, in order to create a General Assembly resolution you need a sponsor and a co-sponsor. Obviously I’m delighted and honoured that the British government and the Costa-Rican government came forward and established the peace day in its current form: the day of ceasefire and none-violence with a fixed calendar date. That was the greatest challenge. And of course I’m an individual, you know I was bottom of the class, the only qualification I got was a D in pottery, I’m dyslexic, I didn’t really know much… I’m telling you when I began this process I knew nothing of the international community and I knew very little about the UN, so it was a steep learning custom in order to make this day a reality, and obviously I delighted and very honoured to have been able to play the part that I played.

You overcame that challenge in a formidable way, but what is the greatest challenge facing you now?

The greatest challenge is obviously to create a day that is self-sustaining, i.e. institutionalize it. In the same way as on Mother’s Day you give flowers to your mother, it’s very important and it means a lot to your mum and my mum, and that’s a day that is institutionalised. It’s self-sustaining. It doesn’t need any one group to continue to hold it in the place which it has in our hearts and minds. And we are going to manifest exactly the same situation: the Peace Day, the 21st of September.
Of course, we won’t do it alone. In fact, every aspect of this I haven’t done alone. If it wasn’t for the courageous men and women and support of the UN system none of this would have happened in the first place. If Secretary General Kofi Anan hadn’t encouraged me to continue on it wouldn’t have happened. If Ban Ki-moon hadn’t spoken to me and encouraged me then it would be a very different situation. Under Secretary-General Kieran Prendergast, Shashi Tharoor, Ahmed Faouzi… theses men have been incredible inspirations to me and I’m deeply grateful to the Secretariat for opening up the doors in Somalia and Burundi, Gaza, the West Bank, India, Sri Lanka, etc. It’s been very much a collective effort of UN staff, corporations, individuals that have supported me, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone. I think it’s because of everyone that we will achieve the ultimate goal, which is that whenever you say, “It’s Peace Day today” somebody will say to you, “Well of course, I know!” That’s what we want to get to. We want to get to a place where everybody knows about the day and that is what we will achieve in the coming years.


You decided to involve companies such as Addidas, Coca-Cola and Puma, amongst others, as a marketing tool to reach out to as many people as possible. As you show in your film, in the mind of some this is perceived as negative and has the potential to undermine your message. Do you see it as necessary step to achieve your goal?

Absolutely! And I don’t think personally in any way working with corporations undermine what’s going on. In fact, I think it’s the reverse. If you look at the way in which the United Nations has worked with corporations for years – UNICEF has been one those organizations… You have for example the Global Compact… It is generally accepted and anybody who isn’t accepting that working with a corporation or the corporate sector is fundamental to the success of situations like this really doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s the reality of the situation. For me, united corporations would equally, like the United Nations, be very successful. The advantage that United Corporations would have is that the workforce is large. They obviously would have an awful lot of money, and they obviously have the trust of individuals throughout the world; so the corporate sector is well placed to make a massive contribution towards the united board of wealth and international corporations cooperating. Which of course, the academics are saying, is the key to humanity’s survival. Intercultural cooperation is the key, and corporations have to support it up so that we can be here today. I’m obviously very grateful to them for the way in which they’ve made things a reality.


So it was a necessary step.

Oh yes it’s a totally necessary step. There really is frankly, in my opinion, absolutely no other way of looking at it. I mean, if you want to affect change, if you really want to affect the supply chain, if you really want to see the corporate sector evolve and be a contributor to a safer world –one where the destruction of each other and the destruction of our environment is on the decrease, then you have to be in the room of the most powerful men and women in the world, many of which are working within the corporate sector. For me, to be on the outside and to criticize and throw stones at these individuals is individually pointless. You have to be in the room in order to affect change, and that’s always been my strategy from the beginning. I believe it to be the right strategy. I believe that the men and women that I’ve met in the corporate sector are just like you and I: they want to change the world, they don’t want to see people suffering, they want to do all that they can. So treating them as human beings with respect obviously creates a situation where they’re in the right frame of mind to be able to do the kind of things that we want them to be able to do. That’s the right way to go about it.

It’s also a matter of leading by example. If they’re going to do it then maybe some other smaller companies will be willing to do the same.

I totally agree, and I also think it’s very important. The man that I saw in the film, Ray Anderson... Watch the film (again) and listen to the words of Ray Anderson… I mean he is one of the great, great thinkers in America in the way in which corporations have a social responsibility. He really is leading the way; he knows that working with the corporate sector is the way forward. Anybody who says otherwise, in his words, are individuals who are into revolution, not evolution, and revolution is a lot more bloodthirsty than evolution. Before I made the decision to work with the corporate sector I did my research and I made sure I understood what I was embarking on, and once I did understand I have stood by this decision and will continue to work in that way, exactly in the same way that the UN Global Compact does.

We had a last question for you. With all that you went through, what would you say was the hardest decision: going to Afghanistan or cutting the ponytail?

Hahaha… dear… Cutting the ponytail!




Picture Copyright PeaceOneDay