Ten Thousand Years Older

Werner Herzog

Brazil, 2002, 10 mins

From Trumpet: Ten Minutes Older programme in which 15 directors were given exactly 10 minutes and complete creative freedom to bring their own unique interpretation of ‘time ’ to the screen. In Ten Thousand Years Older, Herzog revisits a Brazilian rainforest tribe first introduced to the modern world in 1981, whose lifestyle and culture have subsequently been pushed forward ten thousand years with huge repercussions for the elder and younger members of the tribe.

 

 

We Wuz Robbed

Spike Lee

US, 2002, 10 mins

In We Wuz Robbed, Lee explores the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore in November 2000. Through first person accounts with campaign workers, advisors, confidants and speechwriters for Al Gore, Lee illuminates the confusion over the Florida polls and chronicles a historical political event that has led to what some have called the first American presidential "selection."

 

 

Civil Status

Alina Rudnitskaya

Russia, 2005, 29 mins

An observational documentary about the sometimes bizarre, sometimes absurd daily happenings at the Marriage Palace, a civil registry office in St. Petersburg, where people from all walks of life come to record the most significant events in their lives - marriages, divorces, births and deaths. Civil Status is another exceptional film from the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio.
Filmed in grainy black and white, without commentary, Civil Status opens a unique window on contemporary Russian society.

 

 

South of Ten

Liza Johnson

US, 2006, 10 mins

Liza Johnson's poetic, experimental short documentary South of Ten juxtaposes ten surrealistic and poignant sequences from individual lives, caught up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. These include: a man locating a trombone amid a pile of rubble, a relief worker gazing at the ocean from beneath a moving house, its owner watching from her (now mobile) living room, a girl absconding from a cluster of temporary tent like shelters, and six additional haunting scenes.

 

 

Mother

Christoph Steger

UK, 2006, 7 mins

Mother is an undertaker. She has a loud voice, an expressionless face, and huge square glasses. The simplicity and directness with which she has been animated fits the robustness she exudes. For Mother, it's no frills or smooth talk; you should grant the dead their peace. In an in-depth interview, she talks about her life among the dead with touching consideration. For example, she admits that she initially had to get used to their presence, but now she lives upstairs from them, "so they are not alone."

 

Holocaust Tourist

Jess Benstock

UK, 2006, 10 mins

A wry animated documentary about how Holocaust tourism distorts history. A whistle stop tour from Auschwitz hot-dogs to Krakow's kitsch Judaica. Filmmaker Jes Benstock encounters a range of characters involved in the tourist industry and uses animation to help uncover the way tourism and tourists are changing the way we understand the difficult past.

 

 

The Seal/ Hylje

Miia Tervo

Finland, 2005, 8 mins

The Seal is an essayistic, contemplating and immensely visual film, where the image is left room to tell. The landscapes of Lapland, the herds of reindeer and the seemingly permanent ice function as the landscapes of the mind of the main character when she lets go with her kick sledge on the smooth snow and tells her story.
What happened to the young woman in the hospital is left up to the viewer’s sensitivity, but it is something so difficult and personal that the course of life changes, and the experience causes her to make surprising choices.

 

Black Sheep

Paul Hamilton

UK, 2006, 10 mins

Combining photographs, cine and video footage from family archives and present day interviews with his parents and siblings, Edinburgh based filmmaker Paul Hamilton wonders what it is to be a Black Sheep. This short documentary takes the audience on an emotional journey through the filmmaker's youth and the rocky relationship with his family.