Year 2020-2021: Time in cinema

Introduction

Focus

Participants

Blog

Introduction

This year’s new thread continues the reflection on cinema sensation that began last year. It is often through the sensation of the present that the times of the past and the future emerge.

Rather than films which have time as a subject, it will be a question of time in all films, of the tension between telling and watching; also of our perception of time, as a spectator.

Cinema Cent Ans de Jeunesse (CCAJ) workshops will be present in 16 countries across the globe, and, for the first time, in Canada and Greece.

Workshops 2020-2021

In France, 8 regions : Corsica, Île-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Overseas: Martinique, Guadeloupe.

In Europe : Germany (Berlin et Frankfurt), Bulgaria, Spain, Greece (new), Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom (England).

Across the world : Argentina, Brazil, Canada (new), Chile, India, Japan, Mexico, Uruguay.

Focus

“The image is cinematographic if it lives in time and if time lives in it, from the first filmed shot.”

“The almighty master of the cinematographic picture is the rhythm, who expresses the flow of time within the shot.

“It is, beforehand, through this meaning of time, through the rhythm, that the filmmaker expresses his/her individuality. The rhythm colours the work with stylistic traits. The rhythm is neither thought nor constructed by purely intellectual arbitrary methods. The rhythm of a film emerges spontaneously from the deep perception the filmmaker has of life, of his/her “search of time”.

Tarkovski (Le temps scellé, éd. Cahiers du cinéma)

The question of time is essential to any cinema education approach. Whether it is in the films reception or in the transition into practice. Time is the fundamental raw material of cinema straight from The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.

We will tackle it from two main angles.

• The time of the take (as a real block of time captured by the camera) / the time of the narration (as an abstract timing of the enunciation, of the narrative).

The distinction implies also the duality: watch / tell.

It involves the initial choice of the type of shots itself: long takes (sequence shot) / short takes (cinema of cutting and editing).

• The question of the story time (supposed length of the story) and the time of the film (length of the film).

The very limited time of a film requires all sorts of strategies of time condensation: ellipses; time markers (title cards, dialogue indications, clocks and watches, day-night succession, season clues, etc.); condensations and accelerations by the actors of gestures, journeys, actions. The sleek gestures.

We will then address questions of succession and causality, of simultaneity, of change brought by music to the perception of time, of the frame and time relationship, of technical manipulations of time (slow motion/quick motion, fade-in/fade-out, overlays, split screens), etc.

Alain Bergala