Civilian tales of Libya & Egypt protests immortalized in crowdsourced documentaries

Civilian accounts of the ground reality in Libya and Egypt will be immortalized through documentaries. The distinguishing feature of protests that rocked Middle East and North Africa has been the fact that social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have so far been the channels through which dissidents tried to get the truth out there - besides organizing the revolts - even as the authorities pulled off every trick in the book to gag communication.

Now, fueled by the trend of crowdsourcing coupled with the interest in the movements that have succeeded in overthrowing autocrats - at least in Tunisia and Egypt - after decades of rule, the stories of protests are set to make a mark through films.

While the footage out of Libya has reached an online project aimed at capturing life around the world on a single day, another project aiming to tailor a documentary on the Egyptian demonstrations has surfaced.

'One Day On Earth', a crowdsourced documentary project started in September of 2008, posted the footage of the mass burial in Tripoli on its website on Feb. 23.

Our contacts inside Libya shared a saddening story with us and were brave enough to send us these shocking images. The video and images below were shot in the aftermath of Gadaffi's death squads. We have been told many residents of Tripoli fear to even collect the corpses in the street, as Libyan Forces are reportedly firing at random, a statement that accompanied the footage and photographs said.

The video shot at Ashaat Cemetery, Tripoli, by Brave Supporters of OneDayOnEarth.org shows disheartening images of the kin of those killed in the bloody crackdown launched by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi digging graves.

The photographs that accompany the footage also speak volumes on the sentiment in Tripoli. While two are stills of the mass burial in Tripoli, the third one is a bold message to Gaddafi written on a white wall.

Meanwhile, another crowd-sourced documentary project called #18DaysInEgypt has taken shape in the desire to document the historic revolt of Egyptians that put an end to three decades of totalitarian rule.

You witnessed it you recorded it now tag it #18DaysInEgypt, the #18DaysInEgypt website reads, inviting media from the people of Egypt to weave together a documentary on the 18 days of protests that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

We want to tell the story of the Egyptian revolution with the same tools that helped share it with the world in realtime. We want #18DaysInEgypt to be a crowd-sourced interactive documentary of the events in Egypt from #Jan25 to #Feb11, elaborates a statement.

The usage of character '#' is an allusion to the hashtags used on the microblogging site Twitter, which played a crucial role in the organization of the revolts across the Arab World.

Netizens can participate in the documentary by tagging their media in Twitter, YouTube and Flickr with '#18DaysInEgypt', along with the day it occurred (#jan25 to #feb11), where it occurred (#tahrir, #suez) and other relevant tags about the footage such as #army, #singing, #violence, #tents, and #protest.

The filmmakers behind the project will be able to search for the appropriate media through the tags.

With thousands of hours of footage recorded during this historic event in addition to social media updates, we believe that there is a wonderful story to be told of the pulse of the movement, minute by minute, the statement added.