Peace One Day (2004)

The British film maker Jeremy Gilley documents his personal campaign to establish a single day of global peace and non-violence. In fact, he discovered that Costa Rica had won approval for an original international day of peace back in 1981, so Gilley's quest was to reinvigorate the day with a new and fixed date, September 21 of every year at the United Nations. It took five years of meetings with school children, Nobel Peace laureates, heads of states, NGO bureaucrats, media moguls and even the Dalai Lama, but on September 7, 2001 the United Nations voted unanimously to approve a resolution to designate every September 21 as the new International Day of Peace. In the bitterest of ironies, Kofi Annan was scheduled to ring the peace bell and proclaim the change on September 11, the last day of peace before the new, fixed date on September 21 took effect the following year. Yes, the documentary includes Gilley's naysayers who derided his quest as a hapless and romantic gesture, but I for one join those who saluted him for doing anything and everything to encourage humanity to forsake violence and war.