Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Short Film to Make You Think



This impressive short movie, One Hundredth of a Second, produced by Alex Boden, is about a war photographer facing a dilemma of her profession. She is forced to ask herself, if a person is in mortal danger, do you continue to do your job by taking a photograph rather than getting involved and helping?

I don´t know whether the story is based on real facts or not but I guess events like this happen every day and journalists and photographers must find it very hard to cope with this kind of situations. I don´t want to write my impressions on the movie; I´d rather read yours or listen to them in class -as the topic for your final oral exams.

This is probably the best definition I have read of this film: it is a reminder of the horror behind the images of war that face us in the media every day.



This film reminded me of photographer Kevin Carter, winner of a Pultizer Prize for this photo on the right taken in Sudan in 1993: a starving child collapsing on the ground, unable to walk, while a vulture stalks not far from him/her(?). Haunted by the horrific images he had witnessed, Carter committed suicide in 1994, shortly after receiving the award. Click here to listen and read about Carter´s story: click on "transcript" while you listen to the recording as both listening and reading practice.

7 comments:

  1. Antía Tacón, 1º F11 January, 2012

    This video is very moving and painful. I don't know exactly what I think about the photographer's attitude. She saw how the soldier killed the girl, but she didn't help her - she only took her photo. It doesn't seem very right, so after that she felt guilty, but unluckily, if the she had tried to help the girl, she would probably have been killed too. I guess that, at least, she showed the girl's death to the world, and how horrible and unfair it was. However, we often see this type of photos and forget them too quickly, perhaps because they make us feel uncomfortable; sometimes it’s very hard to realise that behind the photo there is a real story, or a real life, or a real pain.
    I think that the photo of the starving boy and the vulture looking at him is even more painful. A lot of children and adults die everyday, in a so miserable way, because they’re hungry; and while that is happening, in other countries we throw away the food, we are worried about obesity… It’s terribly unfair.

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  2. Nice thoughts, Antía. Thanks for sharing them

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  3. Andrea López Osorio 2ºE17 January, 2012

    I think that this video tries to say to us that behind each photo there is a story. Sometimes we need to see more and more cruel pictures because we are more insensitive, and when we turn off the computer we forget what we have seen.
    We should know that this type of situations can happen to us, although they take place far away

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  4. Andrea López Osorio 2º E19 January, 2012

    I think that this video tries to tell us that there is a story behind each photo. Sometimes we need to see more and more cruel pictures because we are becoming more insensitive to other people´s problems, and when we turn off the computer we forget what we have seen.
    We should know that this type of situations, although they take place far away, can happen to us, such as a terrorist attack and we might be the focus of the news. For this reason we should be more sympathetic with people and their problems

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  5. This video (talking only about the vido and not talking about the story) is very good. But the story is very striking and full of emotions. Life is very good in lots of moments, but there a lot of things that are very cruel, for example, the third world. While here, people are unhappy because they don´t have an Iphone, in these places, there is not food, food!!! But we can do anything, because the world is of this form. (I don´t want to say that I´m a perfect person, because I also want an Iphone, I only want to express the idea). In the other aspect, I think people (like the photographer must have the mind free and feel good with themselves, because it is the best way of live.

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  6. Andrea, do you really think we need to see more cruel pictures to become more sensitive? I don´t. A video like this one, and some minutes to think about its message can be just as useful.

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  7. Iago, life is certainly not fair, and much more difficult in some places than in others. So far, we have been really lucky to live here; I only hope life won´t be much harder for people your age in the future

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