100 (5050 years in 150 seconds)

If you add up the ages of all the people in this short film then you will get the grand total of 5050 years. That’s quite something and it must have taken some tenacity and patience to create this on the part of filmmaker Jeroen Wolf. To begin with there are the issues around shooting the very young and the very old, the first group because of modern taboos the second because of their frailty (not to mention their scarcity).

The project involved asking members of the public to simply state their age to the camera. It is fascinating to watch the years roll by so quickly – this really is the journey of a lifetime – or one hundred of them perhaps. I can only imagine how frustrating it might have been at times. How old are you? Forty seven? Ah, I have that already – thanks anyway!

All told it took Jeroen four months to get all the ages together in one film. It’s interesting to hear the numbers from one to a hundred in Dutch too – the similarities between that and English can be noted very easily at times.