Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
The film explores Scotland through the prism of Human Rights and creative
filmmaking in order to highlight the relevance of the 60th anniversary of the UN
Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Scottish culture.
Human rights in the media tend to be associated with developing countries so we
thought it would interesting to pick 10 commandments and explore them in the
context of contemporary Scotland through the eyes of contemporary artists.
The commandments & the directors are:
1. The right to life by Kenny Glennan
2. The right not to be tortured by Douglas Gordon
3. The right not to be enslaved by Nick Higgins
4. The right to liberty by Irvine Welsh & Mark Cousins
5. The right to a fair trial by Sana Bilgrami
6. The right to privacy by Alice Nelson
7. The right to freedom of thought by Tilda Swinton & Mark Cousins
8. The right to freedom of expression by Doug Aubry
9. The right to freedom of assembly by David Scott
10. The right to asylum by Anna Jones
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Outline Description
To celebrate and bring media attention on the 60th
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, some of Scotland’s most talented filmmakers
and visual artists have collectively created a feature
documentary, The New Ten Commandments. United
by a single theme – Human Rights in Scotland – the
film communicates a variety of artistic visions whilst
exploring the real life stories of those for whom the
Universal Declaration has intimate meaning. With
testimony of human rights abuses sitting alongside
tales of human rights recognition, the film is both an
emotionally powerful journey and an exercise in
passionate filmmaking of the highest calibre.
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Originality
The underlining question is: can a film provide a space
for dialogue and reflection to contribute to human
rights? And if so what kind of filmmaking is required to
enhance such dialogue?
My interest in exploring Human Rights issues as
creatively engaged through practice-based research
dates back to previous work such as “State of the
World” which I co-produced and was successfully
premiered at Cannes film festival 2007.
http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/the-state-ofthe-world/
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117933840?refcatd=
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This previous research and its success led me to coproduce NTC with the creative participation of ten
Scottish based directors, selected by myself and coproducer Nick Higgins. I wanted to transfer some of the
successful process of “State of the World “ back into
NTC.
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Process
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Nick Higgins and myself as producers started researching the content
and the shape of the film and decided that we should go for a multiple
director input in order to translate the diversity of gazes on the
subject. We as co-producers will be the conductors of this orchestra.
Our creative input was define by our ability to connect ideas while
creating cohesion of meaning in such diverse outputs.
We then identified the commandments which we found most relevant
to Scotland and selected the directors that we felt will bring the most
visual challenges into the dialogue of human rights as well as
demonstrating our Scottish talent to an international audience. With
that proposal in place we went out to Scottish Screen, BBC Scotland
and Arts Council for funding (285K) and get on with production.
Each director in creative dialogue with the producers was tasked to
create an original visual response to one Human Right commandment
as it is currently lived, understood and experienced in Scotland today.
The joint development of individual ideas took place in dialogue with
the producers and went on into the editing room. We called on
“experts” “witnesses” related to different areas of human rights to join
us in those discussions in order to widen the debate between politics
and art, so the films would be made through a different process of
production from television work.
We tested the screening of parts of the film with different audiences
while making the film so we could reassess some of the reactions
/impact to the material produced.
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Rigour
• During the research of the different films we talked to relevant experts and
consultants.
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The film was meant to go beyond a mediatic language about human issues
into a creative cinematic language of storytelling linked to human issues. In
order for the project to explore such aesthetically diverse array of audiovisual strategies we (producers/authors) gathered together some of the
most innovative artists at work in Scotland today, including the Oscar
winner Tilda Swinton, Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon, BAFTA winner
Kenny Glenann and the writer Irvine Welsh. Each were given 10’ of the film
to direct.
We made the choice of going for artist voices and not just filmmakers in
order to enhance this new language to talk about issues seen previously in
TV news so our audience had a fresh gaze on human rights.
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We wanted to play with interdisciplinary backgrounds in order to make sure
that we were exploring the concept of human rights from different angles
but also to expand the documentary language linked to a series of different
emotions, making the subject fresh for new audiences.
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Nick Higgins and myself had the fun task to pull the 10 “chapters” into a
cohesive and meaningful feature film in the editing room and try to create a
new context with different meanings for the different chapters to be
integrate in a feature film structure.
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Significance
Trailer: http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/thenew-ten-commandments/
www.newtencommandments.co.uk
Grant Awarded to: Nick Higgins/Noe Mendelle (coproducers)
Funders: Scottish Screen/Scottish Art Council/BBC
Scotland
Value of Grant: £285,000
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The resulting documentary feature film was
premiered at the Edinburgh International Film
Festival, received a theatrical release in Scottish
cinemas (selected as ten best of fest) at which the
Minister of Culture attended premiere.
was broadcast by the BBC (December 2012).
Screened at the Scottish parliament, Minister of
culture and various other MSPs were in attendance
and taking part in the debate afterwards.
Screenings:
Screening at the Scottish Parliament
Theatrical Release – 14 major cinemas throughout
Scotland flowed by Q&A session in order for the audience
to explore some of the issues raised by the film but also
some of the aesthetics used in the film to explore some
issues
Awards:
• Winner Best Broadcast Award, Refugee Festival,
Scotland 2009
• Winner Student Jury Award at DokumentART Film
Festival, Germany & Poland 2009
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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten Commandments
Significance
The ultimate aim of NTC is to bring an innovative look at
Human Rights in Scotland, and the real impact and
significance of the research is to raise consciousness at
grass root level through schools and festival goers.
The effects of NTC also has an impact on different form
and approaches of filmmaking by using multi authors and
a wider community than just a single director such as
“Northen Lights”
In 2012 a companion publication to The New Ten
Commandments film project was published: “Learning
through Film: Human Rights in Scotland“ the book
provides documented support for the pedagogical
presentation of the human rights documentaries in order
to support Scottish school curriculum linked to Human
Rights.
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Noe Mendelle - NTC
References
The film has travelled on major international film
festival and has received 2 international awards. It was
also screened at the Scottish Parliament sponsored by
MSPs to lead a debate on Human Rights. It will now be
distributed in Scottish schools to assist teachers with
that aspect of curriculum.
NTC was also cited as reference of good practice
filmmaking by Scottish Screen report:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/l
dselect/ldcomuni/37/37we24.htm
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1483836/
http://documentfilmfestival.org/about/festival-board
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