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- Paul Otlet was a Belgian, *1868, died 1944, who perfected the Dewey Classification system as "the Universal Decimal Classification", in his lifetime alone totalling 17 million index cards of human knowledge. Seeing the complexity of human knowledge as an almost eternal subdivision of topics, he believed that accessibility to all knowledge for all contained it itself the road to peace for all of humankind. Most of his professional life he harbored the dream of a Universal City, a focus for "harmonious, pacifist and progressive civilization", which he shared with an American artist, Hendrik Christian Andersen. When Andersen in the mid-30's turned to the Italian dictator Mussolini for support to build the city, Otlet turned away in disgust, but soon found renewed support in the great architect Le Corbusier, who drew up plans and assisted him to until the very end. Paul Otlet can be said to be among the chief architects behind the League of Nations (founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War), a unifying body of peace making among all nations, but even so his dreams of a permanent city of peace workers - politicians, intellectuals, scientist and artists working towards the abolition of war - was never recognized for real. And if it wasn't enough that two world wars brought whole societies to their knees, and with them the real-world effects of his firm belief in pacifism; petty thinking in his own nation also destroyed his library and collections of art and science. But even so his ideas of connecting all knowledge and making it accessible in images, audio and instant connections to anyone, anywhere, remained in the world. His is basically the modern version of the story of the difficult birth of the interconnectednes, which we today call "the Internet". A beautiful documentary, "The Man Who Wanted To Classify The World", was created by Francoise Levie for release by Sofidoc Productions in 2002, following almost 1 year of opening and cataloguing the remains of his personal papers: 100 mice infested crates and boxes documenting every little thing in a life full of dreams, theory, planning, and action. Paul Otlet threw nothing away. Even a torn up letter was saved in a separate envelope. But out of the boxes grew a full life, where almost no endeavour went awry: He had found his voice and conviction in pacifism - springing from the innate need to classify and put in order everything, which mankind discovered, developed and thought - and this certainty carried him through out the whole of his life. Not a Ghandi, not a Martin Luther King working among his people, but an intellectual working from a dream so large that one would almost call it a pipe dream, if not for his total conviction: That peace among all nations was possible, if only there was a common focus on peace for all to see and believe in. Paul Otlet died in the winter of 1944. His decimal classification system, the UDC, is still in use today.
- Through the life and writings of Panda Farnana, the first Congolese intellectual to have been awarded a diploma of higher education in 1909, the film proposes a reflection on the beginnings of colonialism both in Belgium and in the Congo. A totally unknown story, an atypical character astride two worlds, a destiny going against cliches and traditional ideas, a man alone against all. In a word, a magnificent occasion to rewrite history.
- For a long time, the assassination of Judges Falcone and Borsellino was told as a simple story of revenge. That of the boss Toto Riina at the head of Cosa Nostra, the invincible Sicilian mafia, against two men who had devoted their lives to fighting him. But today, a historical trial reveals the unthinkable: someone within the Italian state would have guided the murderous hand that cost the lives of the world's most famous anti-mafia magistrates. For the first time, magistrates, politicians and mafia under protection testify - together - to reveal the behind-the-scenes of a pact initiated by the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War. A pact that allowed the Christian Democracy to dominate the Italian political scene for more than fifty years and the mafia to rule order in the shadows. In the light of these exclusive testimonies, more than half a century of incestuous links between the state and the mafia are revealed and the deaths of Judges Falcone and Borsellino appear less and less as a vendetta and more and more as crimes of the state.