Real Times Four

Thirty years from now, when intro film students look back on the long-dead "Age of Film," it may at first seem strange to them that two seemingly innocuous works-The Blair Witch Project and Time Code-were the earliest artifacts of the new era of movies.

And most people today don't even realize it. A revolution in digital filmmaking is upon us, and while these crude beginnings may not yet thrill with genuinely good storytelling, they absolutely quiver with potential.

Even if the hype turned you off to Blair Witch, you may have missed Time Code, a challenging, flawed, yet groundbreaking film by experimental auteur Mike Figgis. Shot simultaneously on four Sony DSR-1 cameras, Time Code follows multiple plotlines and characters on separate screens without a single cut for its entire 93 minutes. That's right, real-times four. This sort of thing would be impossible with heavy filming equipment and processing delays. Figgis and his team were able to film straight through several times in a day and then watch the entire film later that afternoon. Such on-set dynamics between director, actors and film have never before occurred in the history of filmmaking.

What Figgis has done, essentially, is surrender the most powerful tool of the film medium-editing-to the audience themselves, forcing the viewer to engage different screens at different times to piece together the narrative. That leap forward-or gimmick, according to some-is worth experiencing for anyone with an interest in cinema. Time Code certainly requires a strong sense of cinematic adventure, a lot of patience and, hand in hand with those two, a tolerance for hammy acting. But it's not every day you get to see a revolution beginning.

Quad Flix will be showing Time Code this Saturday at 7:30 and 9:30pm, Sunday at 8pm in Griffith Film Theater.