‘Human’ carries message of love across boundaries
Print Edition
YANN Arthus-Bertrand is a French documentary filmmaker, photographer and environmentalist.
He is the founder of the GoodPlanet Foundation and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environmental Program.
Born in 1946 in Paris, Arthus-Bertrand is well-known to the world for making the 2009 documentary “Home” and for his book “Earth from Above” in 1999.
His latest project “Human” was screened in China for the first time at the 2016 Shanghai International Film Festival.
The documentary is a collection of real-life stories and images that seeks to answer the question of what it means to be human.
For four years, Arthus-Bertrand and his team gathered significant amount of content and footages from five continents and 2,000 interviews.
They created a gallery of films adapted to all platforms, including a 191-minute theatrical movie, a 131-minute television film, a miniseries “On the Trial of Human” featuring three 52-minute films, an 80-minute “The Stories of Human” as well as documentaries on the making of “Human.”
As human stories can be subjective, Arthus-Bertrand chose not to include commentary in the documentary to avoid passing any sort of judgement.
The interview that opens the documentary is Leonard’s story, a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his wife and child. This interview is about love, forgiveness, violence, family, challenges and the turning point in life.
“Human” is not a documentary that’s easy to watch — the real stories are powerful and soul-touching.
Arthus-Bertrand spoke with Shanghai Daily about the making of “Human” and how it has changed his life.
Q: What is the biggest difference in telling the stories of nature and people?
Everything is mixed, when you fly around the planet, you see the people walking, you see everything is mixed. It’s not one side humanity and one side nature, we are all part of this.
Q: You mixed two kinds of photography methods in “Human.” Why?
Because I’ve been doing the interviews for a long time, and I’ve been doing aerial photography for a long time. In fact, it was natural for me to mix these two together. And it’s working. When you are filming the landscape, it’s nature talking to you; when you see these images, they talk to you.
Q: Do you like to explore new technologies in filmmaking?
Not too much. The 360 degrees and 3D technologies are amazing, but I’m not too much interested. In documentary films, these people are not actors; they are real people. We have to express the emotions and say the truth, and the truth is not through technology.
Q: After all these years traveling around the world and making documentaries, talking to different people, and seeing different things, has your job as a director changed your personal life?
Sure, I became a vegetarian. But, you know it’s not because of my job. When you are 70 years old and you are close to the end, you think about what’s important in your life, what’s your mission. Everybody has a mission, everybody can think about improving the planet, to be a good father, a good mother and a good friend. I think it’s important to be in action of what you think. I think I became better.
Q: You said you want to find the answer of why people can live together. You dealt with the topic in every story. Did you find the answer?
No, but I was surprised by the success of “Human,” because it’s small and intimate, and there’s no script. Love is the key, we need love and we need to give love, and this movie is about that. When you look at the movie, nobody is ugly, everybody is beautiful. I think it’s nice to accept that everybody is nice. It’s easier to live full of love. Living to hate destroys you completely.
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