“I was envisioning a global campfire where we could all share our stories.”

Such was the wish of the Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim for her globe-spanning new film event, and one can immediately envision the typical New York film cynic cocking his head and raising an eyebrow, wondering what Ms. Noujaim hopes to accomplish by organizing a synchronized online film festival.

“Well, you have to start somewhere,” she said. “People may be cynical, but I started with the idea that if you meet someone and laugh with someone, it’s harder to kill them.”

Next Saturday, Ms. Noujaim’s wish will become a reality when her Pangea Day festival — named for the massive supercontinent that existed before the continents drifted apart — links venues in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro for a live program of films, music, and speakers. The event will also be simulcast in seven languages on the Internet and television in the hopes of attracting more than 500 million viewers around the world.

“I remember being in Italy and Greece and Cairo during the World Cup,” Ms. Noujaim said, “and everywhere you went, you would see these screens set up everywhere. I was watching all this, and I started wondering: Could you create something like this for filmmakers and storytellers? What if you could create the World Cup of storytelling? You can’t create something like the World Cup in only one year, but we’re off to an amazing start, with more than 1,000 organized screenings in over 100 countries.”

Ms. Noujaim, best known for her 2004 documentary about Al Jazeera, “Control Room,” conceived Pangea Day after she was awarded the 2006 TED Prize, an annual honor handed out to three creative individuals along with a $100,000 check and the granting of one “wish to change to world.” (Past TED Prize winners include U2’s Bono, President Clinton, and the photographer James Nachtwey.)

When it came time to present her wish, Ms. Noujaim began with a concept that was as simple as it was seemingly profound: “I wish,” she said, “to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.”

TED, launched in 1984, exists as an annual conference meant to unite the brightest lights in technology, entertainment, and design. Each year, the organization’s three prizewinners are able to leverage the pool of talent present at the TED conference to help make their wishes a reality. This year, the resulting collaboration has led to the organizing of the Pangea Day project, which, aside from its various speakers and musical acts, will present 24 short films in a four-hour event on May 10, at 1 p.m. New York time.

“It’s not just a short-film festival, but a larger event that incorporates music and speakers as well,” Ms. Noujaim said. “It started in a very grassroots way and with a simple mission. We asked people a simple question: ‘If you had the world’s attention for a few minutes, what story would you tell?’ Out of all these collected short films, we’ve put together a program that we hope will reach across nations and languages and get a feel for the pulse of the world right now.”

Ms. Noujaim’s wish attracted the attention of some big-league collaborators, some of whom have experience with global-scale events, notably Bob Geldof, who organized the Live Aid and Band Aid concerts in the 1980s, as well as last year’s Live 8 concert. Joining Mr. Geldof are Paul Simon, Alexander Payne, Meg Ryan, J.J. Abrams, and others. Partly as a result of their involvement, several major broadcasters and theater chains around the world have signed on to the project, as well as hundreds of independent organizers who have assembled public and private viewing parties in every major city.

In New York, viewers will have four options for taking part in the festivities. In addition to visiting one of the dozen or so local gatherings, for which one can register on www.pangeaday.org, people can watch the event on the Web site, tune in to Current TV, or stream the program on any video-enabled cell phone.

After putting out the call for entries months ago, Pangea Day organizers were inundated with more than 2,500 film submissions from more than 100 countries. Later teaming with Nokia, the event expanded its reach to disadvantaged areas and conflict zones across the map by distributing video-enabled cell phones so those short stories from those places could be added to the mix.

“We asked people to think in terms of universal themes, with as little language as possible,” Ms. Noujaim said. “We sought out movies that dealt with universal issues of love and anger and hate and humiliation and parenthood. It’s all about providing a common basis, to come to understand the world as another sees it. It struck me, if you show a movie in two parts of the world, the film can become a common link between two people who otherwise have nothing in common.”

But the potential reach of Pangea Day has surpassed even Ms. Noujaim’s own expectations.

“Some might see it as a small drop in the bucket, but it’s an important first step in organizing people around sharing our ideas,” she said. “When I was told that I could come up with one wish, I thought, ‘How can you not wish for world peace?’ But I knew that I wasn’t in an American beauty pageant. So my next thought was: ‘How do you have people meet each other if you can’t force people to travel?’ You have them travel, and meet, through film.”

ssnyder@nysun.com