''Ten Thousand Years Older'' is a 2002 documentary film by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusu ...

about the Amondauas (Uru Eus) people of Brazil. The ten-minute film was produced and included as part of the '' Ten Minutes Older'' project, released in the collection ''The Trumpet''.

Synopsis

The film opens with

stock footage Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...

of the Amondauas' first contact with modern Brazilians in 1981. Herzog states that they had previously only a "stone age existence", with no knowledge of

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on e ...

. Within several years, the majority of the tribe had been wiped out, most killed by

chicken pox Chickenpox, also known as varicella ( ), is a highly contagious disease caused by varicella zoster virus (VZV), a member of the herpesvirus family. The disease results in a characteristic skin rash that forms small, itchy blisters, which ...

and the

common cold The common cold, or the cold, is a virus, viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the Respiratory epithelium, respiratory mucosa of the human nose, nose, throat, Paranasal sinuses, sinuses, and larynx. ...

. Herzog visits the tribe twenty years after their first contact. He discusses the elders' opinions on their new life, as well as the children's. The elders long for their previous lives as jungle warriors, while the children are embarrassed by their parents and want to live as modern Brazilians.

References

2002 films Anthropology documentary films 2002 short documentary films Indigenous peoples in Brazil {{ethnography-stub