Ten Thousand Years Older

Ten Thousand Years Older is a short documentary film directed by Werner Herzog in 2002 for the collection Ten Minutes Older, Trumpet. This short film documents the changes the Amondauas people’s live underwent when they came into contact with modern Brazilians.

Prior to outside contact the Amondauas were living a very basic stone-age type of life, and the after contact ended up having to face some of the same problems in dealing with the modern world that many other similar tribe have had to over time. One thing that sticks out to me in this vein is the disregard of germs. I get that Brazilians are not Americans and thus probably have a much different history taught to them in school, but the theme of native peoples being killed by the germs that outsiders bring to their lands is pretty common, you would think that these people would have been more careful since this contact was going to – and did – change the Amondauas’ lives so much. This shows that through all of our inventions and new ideas humans still have some disregard for the power of things they cannot see, nor do they really understand how to learn from their past mistakes.

The people in this film talk about time a fair amount. There is mentioning that by giving the Amondauas these metal objects brings them forwards into time. There is a rift of old times verses new times in the form of how people are living their lives; the older generation wants to go back before the contact point, and the younger people want to move into modern Brazil.

The goal of this short film is to make a commentary on the idea that progress is always the correct thing to do. Progress in this case has killed many people and causing a chasm to form between those that are left. These people might have been given technological process but they were not given a cultural progression in a way that would have allowed for their various generations to still maintain one cohesive identity.

This short film can be watched below:

Lifeline

Lifeline is a short film from the 2002 collection Ten Minutes Older, Trumpet . This particular short film was directed by Victor Erice.

The plot boils down into the idea of this whole family putting their lives on pause to rush to the aid of the injured baby. Being that this film is named Lifeline is can also be assumed that this short film is meant as a commentary on the necessity of connections between humans to live.

Being that film is a linear medium, much like life, the director relies on the audiences ability to pick up on the relations between the simultaneous events that are being shown. This is because time is an instantaneous medium that everyone experiences together at once and shares, even though we do not share our experiences within that shared time. The sames goes for nature as a whole, which is given a perspective here through the bird knocking berries out of a tree onto a snake.

This film establishes a sense of time through the boy drawing a watch on his hand, the clock in the room where the grandfather plays cards, and the newspaper the older women is making her bread mix on that announces a “New Spain” in regards to the Axis powers.

There is a point where the mother asks the baby why it wanted to leave before it’s time, and it just stares at her. With the way the images play with each other, it is almost if the baby knew about the coming war an wanted to escape before the chaos started.

Outside of that observation however, is the connection between people as they share time. Being that people share time as a whole they also need to share time with each other or when it comes to a point in their lives when they are in trouble no one will be around to help them. Likewise it also shows how having a connection between people makes those experiences more relevant to your life than simultaneously occurring national events.

This short film can be watched below, mind the ads:

Ten Minutes Older

Ten Minutes Older is a 1978 short film which was directed by Herz Frank. It is the original film to which the collection Ten Minutes Older, Trumpet & Cello where created to honor.

This short film is one single shot, focused on the face of a child as he watches something on a screen the viewer never sees.

This short film shows the viewer their own face as they cannot see it while watching a movie. The child’s face goes through a range of emotions in a very short amount of time, totally engrossed in what is happening in front of him. Thus is exactly what happens to older viewers watching films as well, as well crafted films impose a state of pre-mirror stage on the viewer – making them into a child again, one who cannot differentiate their own emotions for the ones the characters are having on screen.

The goal of this short film is to make the audience more aware of the fact that this is happening to them, and to make them realize that when they submit to these emotional experiences it effects them and makes them “older” as the now have gained all these artificial experiences which they never actually experienced.

This short film can be watched below:

100 Flowers Hidden Deep

100 Flowers Hidden Deep is a short film directed by Chen Kaige in 2002 for the DVD collection Ten Minutes Older, Trumpet which was created to honor the new millennium and Herz Frank.

This short film is about the awareness of the passing time and how much China has changed recently. One of the movers says “Now it is the natives that get lost in Beijing”, which is displayed by the older man not knowing where all the streets go any more since all the buildings have been modernized. They get to Flower Street where the old man’s house was / he still thinks is there and they have to move his invisible furniture for him. During this process the old man finds a part of the bell that use to hang from the roof. Then when they are driving away after a “vase” is broken, the car hits a bump, which turns out to be the other part of the bell. The old man puts the bell together and the music from it turns the short film into a watercolor painting of what his house, and the area around it used to look like before Beijing had turned to modern construction.

The point of this and what it has to do with time is that while time changes things in the physical world the mind can take bits of time and save them as memories. China might have changed, but the man’s memory of how it used to be has not, and so he still “sees” the older version of the city. These memories are also a part of the history of the city, the memories are the flowers hidden deep for there individual vision from each person is what helps to construct the overall identity of a city and to make it unique. 

This short film can be viewed below: