Foundation Course: Introductory Module- CINEMA

D4: Time And Cinema;AmlanChakraborty, CRT 9th August,2016. 2-4 PM

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Time is simply a man made invention to count the period of events.

It does not exist in nature.
Look at the concept of time through the study of motion.
The most important constant in the universe is the movement of mass.
Without movement, everything would cease to exist.
In order to deal with movement, i.e. calculate velocity, we need two concepts: time and
distance.
We devised a way to "measure" time by observing the movement of our Earth around the sun
and that of the moon around the Earth.
We divided those intervals using a (sixty-based) various system(s).
Time has evolved from a sun dial to indicate parts of a day, to the moon, to indicate certain
seasons, such as when to harvest, to the sun, to indicate periods like years.
Humans always try to improve the concept of time, today they use the cycles from the
resonance of a caesium atom to be a reference.

HISTORY:
Since early beginnings man has tried to put a meaning to events to somehow define the past,
present, and future.
Time does not exist in the known universe, only in the minds of humans.
Because we can count the cycles the elapse during an event, we somehow convince ourselves
that time is real, but only because it appears to be real because it is so convenient to use, yet it
does not exist.
Similar analogy would be cars, because humans invented them does not mean they exist
elsewhere in the universe.
Time is very useful to mankind, but it is a tool only.
Food for thought 'if so many believe that time is real, does it make it true?'

WHO INVENTED TIME?

A large variety of devices has been invented to measure time. The study of these devices is
called horology. An Egyptian device that dates to c.1500 BC, similar in shape to a bent T-
square, measured the passage of time from the shadow cast by its crossbar on a nonlinear rule.

HOROLOGY:-science of time, 1752, a modern word coined from Greek hora "hour; part of the
day; any period of time" (see hour) + -logy. "The term horology is at present more particularly
confined to the principles upon which the art of making clocks and watches is established"
[American edition of the "British Encyclopedia," Philadelphia, 1819].
Earlier in English it meant "clock, clock dial" (c. 1500), in which sense it represents
Latin horologium "instrument for telling the hour" (in Medieval Latin, "a clock"), from
Greek horologion "instrument for telling the hour" (a sundial, water-clock, etc.),
from horologos"telling the hour."
Related: Horologist (1795); horological (1590s). Horologiography (1630s) is the art or study of
watches and timepieces.
TIME (noun) etymological meaning>

Old English tima "limited space of time," from Proto-Germanic *timon- "time" (source
also of Old Norse timi "time, proper time," Swedish timme "an hour"), from PIE *di-mon-,
suffixed form of root *da- "cut up, divide" (see tide (n.)).

Abstract sense of "time as an indefinite continuous duration" is recorded from late 14c.
The concept of time is self-evident. An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a
day of hours and a year of days. But we rarely think about the fundamental nature of
time.

Time is passing non-stop, and we follow it with clocks and calendars. Yet we cannot
study it with a microscope or experiment with it. And it still keeps passing. We just
cannot say what exactly happens when time passes.
Time is represented through change, such as the circular motion of the moon around
Earth. The passing of time is indeed closely connected to the concept of space.
According to the general theory of relativity, space, or the universe, emerged in the Big
Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Before that, all matter was packed into an extremely
tiny dot. That dot also contained the matter that later came to be the sun, the earth and
the moon -- the heavenly bodies that tell us about the passing of time.
Before the Big Bang, there was no space or time.
"In the theory of relativity, the concept of time begins with the Big Bang the same way as
parallels of latitude begin at the North Pole. You cannot go further north than the North
Pole," says Kari Enqvist, Professor of Cosmology.
One of the most peculiar qualities of time is the fact that it is measured by motion and it
also becomes evident through motion.
According to the general theory of relativity, the development of space may result in the
collapse of the universe. All matter would shrink into a tiny dot again, which would end
the concept of time as we know it.
"Latest observations, however, do not support the idea of collapse, rather inter-galactic distances
grow at a rapid pace," Enqvist says.

VIDEO Clip of Arrow of Time to be shown to all.

Formal Reasoning of Time:

Consider this one issue upon which philosophers are deeply divided: What sort of
ontological differences are there among the present, the past and the future? There
are three competing theories. Presentists argue that necessarily only present objects
and present experiences are real, and we conscious beings recognize this in the
special vividness of our present experience compared to our dim memories of past
experiences and our expectations of future experiences. So, the dinosaurs have
slipped out of reality even though our current ideas of them have not.
However, according to the growing-past theory, the past and present are both real,
but the future is not real because the future is indeterminate or merely potential.
Dinosaurs are real, but our future death is not. The third theory is that there are no
objective ontological differences among present, past, and future because the
differences are merely subjective. This third theory is called eternalism.

How Is Time Related to Mind?

Physical time is public time, the time that clocks are designed to measure.
Biological time, by contrast, is indicated by an organism's various internal clocks or
cyclic processes such as its circadian rhythm and its heartbeats. It is not really a
kind of time, but is better thought of as a biological measure of physical time.
Psychological time is different from both physical time and biological time.
Psychological time is private time. It is also called phenomenological time, and it,
too, is best understood not as a kind of time. Think of it as awareness of physical
time.
Psychological time passes relatively swiftly for us while we are enjoying an
activity, but it slows dramatically if we are waiting anxiously for the pot of water to
boil on the stove. The slowness is probably due to focusing our attention on short
periods of physical time. Meanwhile, the clock ticks independently of our anxiety
or our other bodily processes. There is no experimental evidence that the character
of physical time is affected in any way by the presence or absence of consciousness
or the presenceor absence of any biological phenomenon.

What is Time-Based Art?

On July 1, 2012, Posted by OnajideShabaka, In News,Three-by-Six, By call-to-artists,Three-by-Six ,With No Comments
At a fundamental level, all art and creative output is the result of some
expenditure of time, as time is the medium in which thought and physical
construction take place.
However, much of how we experience art is removed from time, not only
the passage of time as it relates to us, but also the time used by the artist to
make the work or even the time period in which it was produced. In a
gallery or museum (in virtually every space except the active artists studio
itself), art is received as a static object, removed from time and flux.
Definitions are sometimes a very tricky thing when it comes to art. For instance, what exactly
defines time-based art? Is it just anything with a beginning and an ending? Does any movie or
video qualify? Is there a separation between time-based art and performance art or theatre? To
further explore this genre, here is our definition of what is considered time-based.

Time based art is a cluster of units dealing with the complex multiplicity of artistic forms which
use the passage of and the manipulation of time as the essential element. Time Based Art
includes key concepts in time based art with specific reference to experimental film, video art
and installation, sound, performance and multimedia computing. Time based art develops critical
awareness by close study of histories of the moving image and the expressive use of technology
and the human body.

USE OF TIME IN CINEMA:

Film

PRESENT, PAST& FUTURE- narrative technique.

ANALEPSIS AND PROLEPSIS: What is commonly referred to in film as "flashback" and

"flashforward." In other words, these are ways in which a narrative's discourse re-order's a
given story: by "flashing back" to an earlier point in the story (analepsis) or "flashing forward"
to a moment later in the chronological sequence of events (prolepsis). The classic example of
prolepsis is prophecy, as when Oedipus is told that he will sleep with his mother and kill his
father. As we learn later in Sophocles' play, he does both despite his efforts to evade his fate. A
good example of both analepsis and prolepsis is the first scene of La Jete. As we learn a few
minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of
the film's diegesis is a time directly following World War III. However, as we learn at the very
end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is,
in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an
analepsis and prolepsis in the very same scene.

These are ways in which a narrative's discourse re-orders a given story: by "flashing back" to
an earlier point in the story (analepsis) or "flashing forward" to a moment later in the
chronological sequence of events (prolepsis). The classic example of prolepsis is prophecy, as
when Oedipus is told that he will sleep with his mother and kill his father. As we learn later in
Sophocles' play, he does both despite his efforts to evade his fate. Many narratives contain
examples of analepsisOdysseus recounting his journey from Troy, Aeneas describing the fall
of Troy, the narrator explaining why Silas Marner left his hometown, and so on

The creator of the flashback technique in cinema was D.W. Griffith.[citation needed]

Flashbacks were first employed during the sound era in RoubenMamoulian's 1931 film City Streets, but
were rare until about 1939 when, in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights as inEmilyBront's original novel,
the housekeeper Ellen narrates the main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed
Heathcliff's frantic pursuit of what is apparently a ghost. More famously, also in 1939, Marcel Carne's
movie Le jour se lve is told almost entirely through flashback: the story starts with the murder of a man
in a hotel. While the murderer, played by Jean Gabin, is surrounded by the police, several flashbacks tell
the story of why he killed the man at the beginning of the movie.

One of the most famous examples of non-chronological flashback is in the Orson Welles' film Citizen
Kane (1941). The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the word Rosebud.
The remainder of the film is framed by a reporter's interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in a futile
effort to discover what the word meant to Kane. As the interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's life unfold in
flashback, but not always chronologically. Welles' use of such unconventional flashbacks was thought to
have been influencedbyWilliam K. Howard's The Power and the Glory, written by Preston Sturges and
released in 1933.

Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as an unreliable narrator. Alfred
Hitchcock's Stage Fright from 1950 notoriously featured a flashback that did not tell the truth but
dramatized a lie from a witness. The multiple and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errol
Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line are presented as flashbacks based on divergent
testimony. Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Rashomon does this in the most celebrated fictional use of contested
multiple testimonies.

Sometimes a flashback is inserted into a film even though there was none in the original source from
which the film was adapted. The 1956 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's stage
musical Carousel used a flashback device which somewhat takes the impact away from a very dramatic
plot development later in the film. This was done because the plot ofCarousel was then considered
unusually strong for a film musical. In film version of Camelot (1967), according to Alan Jay Lerner, a
flashback was added not to soften the blow of a later plot development but because the stage show had
been criticized for shifting too abruptly in tone from near-comedy to tragedy.

A good example of both flashback and flashforward is the first scene of La jete (1962). As we learn a
few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the
film's diegesis is a time directly following World War III. However, as we learn at the very end of the film,
that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other
words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis in the very
same scene.

Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, with the earliest known example
appearing in Jacques Feyder's L'Atlantide. In John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962),
the main action of the film is told in flashback, with the scene of Liberty Valance's murder occurring as a
flashback within that flashback. Other examples that contains flashbacks within flashbacks are the
1968 Japanese film Lone Wolf Isazo[8] and 2004's The Phantom of the Opera, where almost the entire
film (set in 1870) is told as a flashback from 1919 (in black-and-white) and contains other flashbacks; for
example, Madame Giry rescuing the Phantom from a freak show. An extremely convoluted story may
contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation, Passage to
Marseille, and The Locket. This technique is a hallmark of Kannada movie director Upendra whose
futuristic flick Super (2010) is set in 2030 and contains multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015
depicting a utopian India.
Satyajit Ray experimented with flashbacks in The Adversary (Pratidwandi, 1972), pioneering the
technique of photo-negative flashbacks.[9]