Longest slices of life

Global Lives Project (website)

Berkeley, USA. 2004-2010

Our mission is to collaboratively build a video library of human life experience that reshapes how we as both producers and viewers conceive of cultures, nations and people outside of our own communities.

Framed by the arc of the day and conveyed through the intimacy of video, we have slowly and faithfully captured 24 continuous hours in the lives of 10 people from around the world [China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malawi, Serbia, Brazil, USA]. They are screened here in their own right, but also in relation to one another.

There is no narrative other than that which is found in the composition of everyday life, no overt interpretations other than that which you may bring to it.

By extending the long take to a certain extreme and infusing it with the spirit of cinema verité, we invite audiences to confer close attention onto other worlds, and simultaneously reflect upon their own. The force and depth of human difference and similarity are revealed in this process. Gaps which mark cultural divides feel, at once, both wider and narrower. This sense - that we, as humans, are both knowable and unknowable, fundamentally different as well as the same - opens a space for dialogue.

24h unedited video footage (plan sequence) available online :

1. James Bullock - San Francisco, USA (November 17, 2004) offline [10' excerpt] [YT trailer]
2. Israel Feliciano - São Paulo, Brazil (May 21, 2006)  [YT trailer]
3. Edith Kapuka - Ngwale Village, Malawi (May 2007)  [YT trailer]
4. Rumi Nagashima - Tokyo, Japan (July 2007)  [YT trailer]
5. Kai Liu - Anren, China (September 2008) 
6. Dadah - Sarimukti Village, Indonesia (October 2008)
7. Muttu Kumar - Hampi, India (March 7, 2009)  [YT trailer]
8. Dusan Lazic - Vojka, Serbia (April, 2009) 
9. Jamila Jad - Beirut, Lebanon (May 15, 2009)  
10. Zhanna Dosmailova - Vannovka, Kazakhstan (October, 2009)  [YT trailer]

How to videotape someone for 24h? (tips from the Brazil segment)

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Dans la peau d'un sans-abri

SAMU SOCIAL, France (website) 20 April 2010

http://www.danslapeaudunsansabri.com/

Campaign for the awareness of homelessness in Paris. SAMU Social is a paramedic NGO. The website will play a 24h video in full screen from a first-person-point-of-view (glasses-mounted micro camera) following the actual life of 4 homeless men in the streets of Paris. The catchline of the publicity campaign is that you cannot escape from this vision that easily, so you can't stop the video (unless you close the browser).

However it has the advantage to play the footage from the time of the day of your local clock (daily synchronization). So you can come back to it at different moments, without restarting from the beginning.

• article en français (Télérama)

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24H Berlin, Arte (website)

filmed : 5 Sept 2008 / aired : 5 Sept 2009

Crosscutting following the lives of 23 main characters in 23 districts of the city of Berlin during 24h.

• Hour by hour footage available at Mubi.com (unfortunately no longer free)

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Longest video on YouTube

CharlesTrippy, 7 Jan 2008

Within the cap limit of 100Mb per video uploaded on the YT server, this guy decided to film continuously (uninterrupted plan sequence) his life, in low resolution, for as long as possible. The result : over 9h (don't mind the broken time counter) of unedited footage in the (boring) life of a non-professional filmmaker. The difference with the other projects above, is this one is devoid of any authorial/editorial/artistic/sociologist intentions, thus doesn't try to look good on camera, or cannot be suspected to change his habits because of all the documentary crew around him. It's self-camera. This is what YouTube is all about : real spontaneous egocentric self-representation.

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Norwegian coastal express - minute by minute
NRK (Hurtigruten), 16-22 June 2011

Download complete footage in HD (torrentfile) 134h / view it online here

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Bergen-Oslo train ride
NRK (Bergensbanen), 27 Novembre 2011

Download complete footage in HD (torrentfile) 7h½

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Related:

• Contemplative TV cruise