150 Seconds Ago

Any film that you make doesn't go into oblivion. It keeps coming back to you for one reason or another, enquiries, reactions, self-analysis. The moral of the story is you must do your best the first time round. If you are ashamed of your work later, there is no way you can keep it under wraps.

I'm cutting "150 Seconds Ago" to a shorter, more manageable version. Metaphormedia, a company that distributes documentaries to schools, colleges, institutes, NGOs has asked for it, and I'm happy for the film to be seen by as many people as possible.

Synopsis and other details of the film

Scavengers all

The dogs scamper through the debris, when they hear voices. They have a glazed look in their eyes, intoxicated with a surfeit of flesh, bones, blood, meat. Glutted, they look through us. After a moment, they slide back into the crevices only they know of. There is enough there to feed them for seven generations.

“Our shop was 120 years old”, he tells us. “My great-great-great grandfather hawked cloth through the city. Carrying a trunk on his head. Who will buy cloth now, in this city?”

Gold, cloth, silver, sweetmeats, flung out of crushed cupboards, and grabbed by opportunistic hands. Diamond rings cut off a sixteen year old girl’s fingers. A woman’s neck, arms, feet cut to sever the gold ornaments off her.

Wealth accumulated over seven generations, crushed under sand and stone, a huff and a puff, in a minute. Naked hands claw at twisted iron rods in broken concrete slabs. Hands jump to grab pieces of iron from a running truck. Kilos and kilos of iron to be sold. Business has never been so good.

A dead body retrieved from under three slabs of concrete by hands and spades. Cameras flash. The retrievers pose with the dead body, hunters with their trophy. One more good deed done.

Everywhere there are powerful pictures, touching sound-bytes. Let’s make the most of the disaster. Let’s retrieve all we can from the debris. There’s enough there to last us all, for seven generations.

Dealing with disaster

Found an old article I had written about my film "150 Seconds Ago", based on life in Bhuj after the earthquake in 2001, through a friend. It brought back so much of how and why I made the film, how it changed me as a person.

">http://www.upperstall.com/150secondsago.html