The Brick

A 90-minute drive from Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), there is a small village completely dominated by its biggest export product: bricks. Everyone, young and old, male and female, contributes to the production of bricks. is a documentary short that records the everyday lives of the inhabitants of the village. These are not the familiar images of very young children performing heavy labor, but rather emphasize the community, in which everyone performs his or her own difficult task. Brick production is part and parcel of everyday life for every inhabitant of the village: young boys hack clay from the ground, women press the clay into molds, men bake the bricks in a kiln and finally a truck loaded with bricks leaves the village. Part of the Solidarity Shorts International Workshops, the film was shot and edited in just six days by inexperienced filmmakers who had never even used a camera before. exudes a feeling of serenity. The calm, quiet images and the repetitive nature of the work give it a steady rhythm that makes interviews superfluous and allows the images to speak for themselves.