Mission Statement

"Days Of His Life, Days Of Our Lives" is intended to be a documentary film that adopts the style of "investigative journalism program" (the like of CBS "60 Minutes" but with a wink and consciousness) where Zamenhof is an investigating journalist and interviewer who leads the film. The program operates according to accepted format: A "portrait of a celebrity" (Zamenhof, a Polish-Jew who struggles to save and improve the world, tells of his days when creating the Esperanto and the many choices he had to make dealing with the skepticism of his contemporaries), alongside an "investigation of a meaningful phenomenon"  (The invention of Esperanto and its position as a bridging language, a possible "Lingua Franca", for the inhabitants of the planet) and "the exposure of a current event story of dramatic interest" (global warming and a collapsing global ecology).

As in any television program, here too there will be commercials and they are cynical, to a certain extent, and closely related to the issues of the film.

The investigative program also includes a classic “debate”, in which interviewees take opposing positions.

This format will lay out a loaded, contemporary, multi-twists film, including fake-news (it is enough to mention the stand Trump and Bolsonaro are taking regarding the planet's warming), thus be an interesting, sensational, cynical, wild and witty film.

The inventor of the Esperanto language, Ludwik Zamenhof, (1859-1917), 100 years after passing away, returns to our planet in order to summon the world's population to tend the ecological crisis.

The Jewish-Polish Zamenhof operates on two levels, past and present.

Referring to his past, he reconstructs the invention of the language, encounters with family, events and acquaintances. He does this in B&W animation that is based on events, photographs and illustrations from his time.

In the present mode, he operates, virtually and in reality, (via a proxy-actor), for the distribution of Esperanto as a language that will unite us all to act: to save the planet from humankind that oppresses it ecologically. He quotes the author Yuval Noah Harari: "There are no more independent countries in the world ... There is no country that can cope alone with the increasing level of the oceans ... Every wasted minute is a minute that is not devoted to the challenge of climate change ..."

Zamenhof recognizes that the ecological discussion is already "boring." That is why he is building an alternative strategy, 'Plan B': Esperanto, the language he invented, is intended to be a basic means of communication among the people of the world. Therefore, he traces in a detective journey the fundamentals of human communication and language.

During the journey he also re-introduces his Esperanto, a language born in agony and for moments was the great hope of the world - and then was blocked.

In the film’s background we have visual clues of the ecological disaster that approaches us.

Zamenhof watches us, the citizens of the 21st century, with ironic admiration: in the face of the analog, violent and murderous world from which he comes, our present world stands with the seductive/destructive power of modern digital technology. At present, technology is not only failing to revert the Earth's collapsing ecology, it rather draws the resources and spreads the poisonous gases and other deadly substances to the atmosphere and oceans causing a greenhouse effect and contamination. Both worlds, the retro-analog world, and the modern-digital world, share a common lament for the conflicted and violent nature of man, a feature of human nature that has not changed.

The film will be made, both in practice and as an ideological approach, via the Internet. This is a mean that fits into the conception that motivated Zamenhof to develop Esperanto in the first place: cosmopolitanism, breaking conventions, independent thinking, love of man and of  the world.

For visualisation purposes we’ll work with artists that apply computer generated art and the internet as widely as possible. for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YNpr_kM97U        https://youtu.be/0zQbmJ5fufc        https://youtu.be/C_R7aHUpov8   https://youtu.be/bmSN4uab-IA        https://youtu.be/783hwpJTjlo          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-J_JjOFFQ     https://youtu.be/7qZBon4kCbA       https://youtu.be/bmSN4uab-IA

In our very-basic trailer, produced by meager funds, the seeds of the film's ideas are presented: an investigative program that produces a collective experience for the entire human society.

The film material has the potential to intertwined realism and fantasy, questions and answers, innocence and cunning.

The Internet and the Esperanto language have the same purpose: to connect people. When, according to Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message," it is apparent that the social media sites be used to make the film and stream the content. Hence Zamenhof conducts live interviews on Skype, investigates online archives, locates relevant 19th / 21st century visuals, tweets, uploads clips to YouTube, discovers interviewees on social media and edits the movie online with collaborators.

As stated, the visual framework relies on two styles and the Internet enables their shared presence: one style is B&W, solid and slow. This is the analog world in which Zamenhof's life has passed, and it gets a life in periodic reconstructions done in animation that combines photos of his past, postcards, book covers, envelopes, radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, records and illustrations. The second style is dominated by the dynamic format and the noisy aesthetics of the Internet: it is energetic, fragmented, colorful and glamorous. We alternate, in a lively interaction, between the two styles according to the period of the film. Thus there is tension between the various elements and the interaction between them: analog-solid-monochromatic (black-and-white) style vis a vis the chaotic-quick-polychromatic (colorful) style.

Zamenhof, who believes that communication is the basis for the existence of human society, aims to ensure that the world's citizens adopt Esperanto and with the help of the unifying language, they will deal with the crucial existential problem: the catastrophic ecological state of the earth. It is a subject that transcends geographic, political and social boundaries, so that the international nature of the film is in advance precast into it: Every person, each of us, constantly produces communication, 24/7, with himself and/or with the world. Into these materials are woven the ecological crisis, Zamenhof's cosmopolitanism and the global language he created.

Zamenhof identifies the similarities between the many languages ​​in the world and constructs an infrastructure, a survival space, that preserves and emphasizes the similarity between all human beings. In this way, he assumes a broad and common ground among the various human cultures in the hope that they will work together for the common goal of addressing the ecological-apocalyptic crisis that is taking place before our very eyes: global warming, ocean pollution and a critical impact on the biological diversity of animals and plants. For example, it is chilling to think of the dramatic decline in the number of bees in the world ("Colony Collapse Disorder") species responsible for a significant proportion of the total amount of crop pollination on earth.

My choice of the subject and the importance I attribute to its production also derive from my personal connection to it: my parents were immigrants from Poland and knew Esperanto. In a kind of anecdotal accident, my mother worked for many years at the Zamenhof Clinic in Tel Aviv and connected me to the man and to the language. It is important that the film be made because Zamenhof was one of the great, shining, lights of Polish Jewry that was annihilated.

The film comes to correct the historical mistake of not regarding Zamenhof’s contribution and personality. He deserves more from us, much more: Cosmopolitan in his soul and his being, a man whose love of the world arose and burst forth from him, Zamenhof wanted to instill awareness that "the whole world is the private room of each and every one of us."  

Hillel's famous philosophy, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," was the guiding light for Zamenhof and navigated his teachings and actions, as expressed in his "Hillelismo" that he wrote when inventing the Esperanto.

In his present “visit” he is committed to save the earth utilizing the language he invented and the use of the tools offered by the Internet, in which form and image we produce the film: The network embodies and reflects Zamenhof's teachings, in that each of us can take part, perhaps a virtual one, but totally real, in a project that, by all means, should be shared by all people of Earth.

Zamenhof brings up memories and meets people, virtual and real, around the world: Brazil, Japan, Poland, The USA, Israel, China, France, India, Canada and more. In so doing, he realizes his sense of belonging and responsibility, to himself and to us, to the entire world.

Throughout the quest for the sources of communications and language, Zamenhof leads the film and receives a place to lay out his ecological-apocalyptic vision along his Esperanto concept. During his journey, he notes his failures, successes, desires, and especially his yearning for a better world, a world that should recover before it is far too late.

Since the film deals with the possibility that a global, bridging, language can affect people's behavior among themselves, as well as their attitude towards the agonized ecology, it is plausible that film will have a social and cultural impact on broad audiences.

This film is unique because no film has ever been made about Zamenhof, a distinguished  cosmopolitan, an innovator with a universal legacy and heritage that have the potential for a profound and significant social change. The film also regards significant issues: The relationship of language to communication in general and native languages in particular; The Esperanto, the birth of the language, its development and dissemination; The possibility of using a universal language to promote universal goals and in particular the universal goal promoted by this film regarding the severe ecological distress in which the Earth is at.  All these together make the social and cultural impact of the film a more-than-reasonable expectation hence making the production of the film worthy and even essential.

The film is suitable for a wide range of audiences: an audience interested in history, in the story of a notable personality who is part of the history of Polish Jewry; An audience interested in the essence of a universal language, the way it came into being and its place alongside native languages; An audience interested in personal contribution to reducing the global ecological tragedy; A young audience interested in Esperanto as an act of belonging to the global world of youth. (It is worth noting that a million people, especially young ones, are now learning Esperanto at the Duolingo website).

The wide range of audiences that the film aims at enables it to be screened in many educational and community settings: schools, higher education institutions, community centers, clubs, cinematheques and small cinemas. It should be acknowledged that beyond the terrible and unthinkable misery and destruction they suffered during the holocaust, Polish Jewry has produced important and valued cultural figures whose heritage is global and relevant in present days, and is based on Jewish cultural diversity and Jewish identity.

The fact that even today Esperanto is alive and is being spoken by millions helps to bring the film as a catalyst for discussion of the ecological disruption, on the general nature of "language" and the difference between a national language (German, French, English or Hebrew) and a supra-national language as the Esperanto.

With regard to the content of the film and its nature it is probable that a collaboration can be established with many Esperanto-language associations around the world. The film uses the online internet medium and an active and interactive site is forthcoming.

I will conclude by saying that the film presents a rather bold move: According to Ludwig Wittgenstein (an Austrian philosopher of Jewish origin, considered to be the most influencing philosopher of the 20th century) language shapes consciousness, and even the reality itself. The film, led by Ludwik Zamenhof - a Jew of a previous generation - creates a link between the possibility of a universal change of consciousness as a result of the spread of a global-bridging language and the need to direct the world's people, especially the young ones, to a global and ecological orientation in order to save the planet from the expected environmental catastrophe.