LOOP
«Some three or four hundred meters away from the Pyramid I bent over, took up a handful of sand, let it fall silently a little further on, and said in a low voice: “I am modifying the Sahara”. The deed was minimal, but the not ingenious words were exact and I thought that I had needed my entire life to be able to say them. My memory about that moment is among the most important things I brought from Egypt».
Jorge Luis Borges, “Desert”,
from “Atlas” collection
This short film is dedicated to analyze the time phenomenon. As time is a crucial element of cinema and as time is influencing the storytelling itself, this film is going to analyze the phenomenon of time in cinema by using the techniques of a documentary, mocumentary, live-acted film, travelogue and television; it will create a narrative on the phenomenon of time in the very specific place, i.e. the beach.
A beach is the ultimate institution for comfort, beauty and relaxation; a contemporary beach recalls the Greek symposium which were a key Hellenic social institution - it was a forum for citizens to debate, plot, boast, or simply to party with others. Therefore, being both – private and public at the same time, the beach is a unique institution to philosophize and relax. In these conditions the time becomes the key character in the film which is questioning every second of (well)being.
The see, sun, sand, sand sculptures, waves, (semi)naked bodies, music, games, good views, good company around – all this sounds and looks like the perfect place you would like to be looped in for ever. Therefore a time loop is another keyword of the film. There are few theories explaining time loop:
• In a physical time loop (rarely seen in the media), the spacetime loops around to form several closed-timelike curves. Since the time in that region is looped, you could only escape it by leaving the affected area. Also, there would be an infinite number of copies of any matter in the area, unless an object left the loop. In that case, there would only be as many copies of that object as many times it completed the loop. This type of time loop cannot be ended or destroyed. Therefore, there would be few copies of the same actors in the movie.
• A time loop or temporal loop is a common plot device in science fiction in which time runs normally for a set period (usually a day or a few hours) but then skips back like a broken record. When the time loop “resets”, the memories of most characters are reset (i.e. they forget all that happened). This situation resembles the mythological punishment of Sisyphus, condemned to repeatedly push a stone uphill only to have it roll back down once he reached the top, and Prometheus, condemned to have his liver torn out and eaten by an eagle each morning. The plot is advanced, however, by having one or more central characters retain their memory or become aware of the loop through déja vu. One well-known example of this is in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, although time loops had appeared in many fictional works prior to that. Stories with time loops commonly center on correcting past mistakes or on getting a character to recognize some key truth; escape from the loop may then follow. (also see “The Last Day of Summer”, “Blind Chance” by Krzysztof Kieślowski, “Come into My World” (song) by Kylie Minogue);
• A predestination paradox. It exists when a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that “predestines” or “predates” them to travel back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. Dual example of a predestination paradox is depicted in the classic Ancient Greek play ‘Oedipus’ or in popular “Terminator”. A paradox of time travel, first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent (The Imprudent Traveller); also “La jetée” by Cris Marker; (source: wikipedia)
PLOT
The film opens in the sunny and sandy beach, summer 2009?, where a suspiciously looking stranger (terrorist, corrupt politician or just small time crook?) appears. From his phone conversation we understand that he has a very limited time (21 minutes) to make a very important decision which might influence his life and lives of others. He does not have time to think properly – he immerses into the beech life by looking at, communicating, making friendship and conversations with other strangers: sportsmen, girls/relaxing philosophers. Soon, he meets another himself and he realizes that he is in the time loop. Although he is shocked by his revelation he likes the current situation except the secretive phone calls that are insisting him to make the decision. The philosophers help him to find the way out of the situation, but he has himself to take a moral stand to escape the situation and the time loop.
By doing it, he finds himself in making a time travel and meeting Jean Paul Sartre and Simone Beauvoir, while the narrator (deaf old person who is explaining the story) himself appears to be Borges himself.