The Documentary That Found Humanity by Interviewing 2,000 People

A very beautiful documentary on what makes us human.

Human is a 2015 documentary by French environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is almost entirely composed of exclusive aerial footage and first-person stories told into the camera. It was the first movie to premiere in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations, to an audience of 1,000 viewers, including the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Human was produced over a period of three years, with director Yann Arthus-Bertrand and a team of 20 persons interviewing more than 2000 people in 60 countries. The crew included five journalists and cameramen with a “fixer” in each location for organizing things and four people responsible for receiving and sorting the material. The aerial crew had 6 people including Arthus-Bertrand.

Each person interviewed was asked the same set of forty questions and was presented on a plain black background without any musical score or any details about their identity and locale.Arthus-Bertrand hoped that removing personal identifiers would draw focus to our similarities, explaining that they “… wanted to concentrate on what we all share. If you put the name of a person, or what country they’re from, you don’t feel that as strongly”.

According to the film’s website, its distribution is designed to be made under “the freest conditions to the widest possible audience.” On 12 September 2015, the film was screened simultaneously at the United Nations, at the Biennale del cinema in Venice and on YouTube. It was also premiered in over 400 screens in France on the same day. Google, the exclusive digital partner of the film, made the film accessible worldwide on YouTube in six languages: English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and French.

Here’s the link to the documentary – it’s available on YouTube for free download.

There are three episodes. “The Documentary That Found Humanity by Interviewing 2,000 People”

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The Mind of Brahma

George Orwell: Literature and Totalitarianism (1941)

George Orwell in an age of moralists

Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Reflections on ideology, morality and conscience

Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

Andha Yug (Dharamvir Bharati, 1953) / धर्मवीर भारती लिखित नाटक ‘अन्धा युग’