Passage à l'acte

This little-seen (at least in the United States) experimental film is a truly astonishing experience. I saw it in a film class, the likely place most people will see it, and at first I wondered if I was dreaming or hallucinating. I looked around at the other students in the class to see if they had similarly bewildered reactions.

This short film appropriates a domestic scene from the classic film of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and plays around with it, like a hip-hop DJ manipulating a record on a turntable. A character begins to say something, and that brief second of footage repeats rapidly, so the character seems to twitch and stutter mechanically. The film continually halts and repeats infinitesimal instants.

Ignore whatever pretensions about "deconstruction" and the like the filmmakers have dressed "Passage" up in and, if you get the chance to watch it, just cherish how totally bizarre it is. I wish it was more readily available on video or DVD.