Basic Instincts

What drives us to war? To murder? The first rule of thumb in film making is to make films about what you can see; the hardest thing is to grapple with ephemeral human motivations. How do films get beneath the external drama to the deeper motivation of life? If we could understand our deepest motivations, could human beings change their behaviour? Or like animals are we motivated to perpetuate our primitive impulses beyond control? Here are four films that grapple with the issue of instinct in brilliantly different ways.

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Bitch

duration 18 minutes 5 seconds

Bitch

Bitch

From UPF

A routine day in the Chechen war. Young soldiers reading letters, telling funny stories, composing verses. A few hours later there is an exchange of fire. Someone is hit…
Blood Oxygen

duration 29 minutes 1 second

Blood Oxygen

Blood Oxygen

From UPF

'Murder is the first rule of nature', de Sade once wrote. 1996 saw the only sadomasochistic murder committed in Estonia. Without apparent reason, two…
First Kill

duration 1 hour 12 minutes

First Kill

First Kill

From UPF

First Kill is a provocative documentary about war and the thin line between good and evil. The film is about the contradictory feelings that war evokes. Feelings such as…
Roof on the Moonway

duration 29 minutes 51 seconds

Roof on the Moonway

Roof on the Moonway

From UPF

In the early 1980s, two hundred pairs of Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) were forced to abandon their last natural nesting place on a river island near the major European…

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