Film #5
e-flux and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen are pleased to present Herz Frank’s Ten Minutes Older (1978), the fifth film in the joint series From My Window / From Your Window.
Herz Frank, Ten Minutes Older, 1978
Latvia, 10 minutes
The title Ten Minutes Older refers to the length of this cinematic experiment about the power of exaltation, but also to the toddlers and preschoolers appearing before the camera. Ten minutes of their lives go by while they watch a puppet show, of which director Herz Frank shows us nothing at all. All we see are the concentrated expressions of the little kids. (IDFA)
Described by the director as his “model documentary,” Ten Minutes Older remains one of the most wondrous ruminations on the passage of time, and on the immersive thrill of watching, to be captured on film.
Herz Frank (1926-2013) was one of Latvia’s most influential documentary filmmakers, and among the first to establish the so-called Riga Poetic Documentary School—the Latvian “new wave”—at the beginning of 1960. Since then his filmography includes more than 80 films, earning him recognition by the Latvian National Film Festival (2001) for his life contribution to cinema, among other awards.
About the series
Organized by e-flux and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, this joint screening series is inspired by a film by Józef Robakowski titled Z mojego okna (From My Window), made in Łodż, Poland over a 20-year period from 1978 to 1999, as part of a project that Robakowski called My Very Own Cinema: “what I work on when nothing is working out.”
The series will present a short film every week—all of them freely available online—which started with Robakowski’s film and has since featured Marguerite Duras’ Les mains négatives (Negative Hands), John Smith’s Dirty Pictures, and Chantal Akerman’s La chambre. Alongside the films, we have asked artists and filmmakers to contribute a brief video-letter or video statement to this project: a small window into their current situation, and into how they are living through this moment. It is our hope that this collective record of the present will help us imagine a future that we want to live in. Responses have so far featured Emily Jacir’s 24 marzo (dalla mia finestra) (From My Window), Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s A Letter to Marguerite, and Nicolas Wackerbarth’s Vier Wände (Four Walls), with new responses presented every week or two.
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is the oldest and most prestigious festival of its kind, founded in 1954.
e-flux is an online publishing platform and think tank, founded in 1999.
For more information contact program@e-flux.com.
