Accelerate

Clare Heney, Carl Hunter

    Research output: Non-textual formDigital or Visual Products

    Abstract

    The aim of Accelerate was to get an audience to question their experience of time in relation to traditional film and to emphasise that this relies on an illusion which could just as easily be different. The project investigated how via the material of film – and in particular the image (24 frames/second) and editing – our temporal experience can be conveyed as problematic to the viewer. In particular, the research wanted to explore how film can capture the difference of clock (or real) versus lived (or experienced and imagined) time (Bergson 1950). The larger question related to the real and the imagined ( or apparent), the experienced and the represented. The research drew on philosophical understandings of time (Merlau-Ponty 1969, Bergson 1950), and examined in particular phenomenological conceptions of the experience of lived versus chronometric time (Cubitt 2007). Following Deleuze (1969) it recognised that cinema has a particular relation to time, but that it also allows us to question our temporal experiences. The research draws on a history of materialist film (Gidall 1989), such as Chris Marker’s La Jetee (1962) or Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de soufflé (1960), or Andy Warhol’s films in order to allow audiences to re-examine their experience of film (where we expect movement and instead see a still) and, via the absence of movement, also their lived experience of time. Rather than giving the audience a smooth experience of 24 frames/ second, Heney (with co-director Hunter) shot the film as still images which she manipulated in the editing process to create an experience of disrupted, distorted and ruptured time. The film was shown at different film festivals, including Keswick Film Festival and Abandon Normal Devices Festival and the Comma Festival where Heney also gave a talk in which she explained the process and her intended meaning. It is hosted on the Caught by the River website.
    Original languageEnglish
    PublisherNorthern Soul Films
    Media of outputOther
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2009

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