Film Research

Time. When confronted with that as a theme for a uni project many questions arise.

• What is it?
• How is it represented?
• Does it even exist?
• What does it mean?

Rather than going blue in the face thinking about it, I decided very quickly to explore how time is represented in different ways through different art forms. The first was a DVD I grabbed from the university library called 'Ten Minutes Older- The Trumpet and Cello' which features the short films of different directors surrounding the theme of time. I looked through them all but two of them stood out to me especially.

The first one I noticed was the one by Mike Figgis which was a multi screen piece of work. Since my brief involved me making a multi-screen it was like winning £10 on the first scratchcard you ever bought. Not that amazing, but still pretty lucky. The film started out as very confusing, four different screens from four different perspectives in what seemed to be four completely separate locations. (See image below)

However as it went on, and the bottom right-hand character began to move through the screens it became obvious that all of the people involved were in the same place. There were also alot of recurring characters such as a young woman who was running through the building and in a bedroom as you can see above. As the protagonist moved through the screens and came across these characters, including a young boy and a man in his 20's/30's I realised that these were all versions of himself at different stages in his life. This for me brought on some questions. Was the film about how people change over the years? Was it about the building?

It is my belief that the film was more about the imprints this man has left on the building throughout his life, rather than the actions the man performed himself, and how he had changed. It's an interesting way of getting the concept across with limited dialogue and the use of multi-screen.

The second one was a film by Jean-Luc Goddard. Being familiar with Goddard's work this one particularly interested me. This one was a lot more abstract than the previous, with this one focusing on the whole 'ten minutes' concept that surrounds this collection. The film displays 'The last ten minutes of...' and changes every time. Using different clips of either filmed work or found footage to show different aspects of human life. (See images below)

The film overall I think reflects on how everything has an end, and how the end of things can bring out the best and worst aspects of human life. For example the last minutes of courage, juxtaposed by the images of people hanging (above). This has dark undertones