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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 Glennan2. The right not to be tortured by Douglas Gordon3. The right not to be enslaved by Nick Higgins4. The right to liberty by Irvine Welsh & Mark Cousins5. The right to a fair trial by Sana Bilgrami6. The right to privacy by Alice Nelson7. The right to freedom of thought by Tilda Swinton & Mark Cousins8. The right to freedom of expression by Doug Aubry9. The right to freedom of assembly by David Scott10. The right to asylum by Anna Jones

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Noe Mendelle: The New Ten CommandmentsOutline 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-of-the-world/http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117933840?refcatd=31

This previous research and its success led me to co-produce NTC with the creative participation of ten Scottish based directors, selected by myself and co-producer 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 CommandmentsProcess

• 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.

• 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 audio-visual 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.

• 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.

• 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 CommandmentsSignificance

Trailer: http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/the-new-ten-commandments/www.newtencommandments.co.uk

Grant Awarded to: Nick Higgins/Noe Mendelle (co-producers)Funders: Scottish Screen/Scottish Art Council/BBC ScotlandValue of Grant: £285,000

• 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 ParliamentTheatrical 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 CommandmentsSignificance

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 - NTCReferences

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/ldselect/ldcomuni/37/37we24.htmhttp://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1483836/http://documentfilmfestival.org/about/festival-board