2025 № 2 (53)
A Moment Stretched and Stopped: The Long Take vs Photographs
UDC 791.43.01
LBC 85.37
DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-394-413
For cit.: Bavykina M.S. A Moment Stretched and Stopped: Long Take vs Photographs. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 2, pp. 394–413. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-394-413. (In Russian)
Bavykina Maria S.
Applicant, S.A. Gerasimov All-Russian University of Cinematography, 3 Wilhelm Pieck Str., Moscow, 129226, Russia
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1941-7892
ResearcherID: LMQ-0715-2024
A Moment Stretched and Stopped: Long Take vs Photographs
Abstract. The article is devoted to studying the influence of the aesthetic properties of the photographic image on the strategies of using the long take in cinema. The unifying conceptual component for both types of images is the category of ‘moment’, which corresponds to both moving (as a ‘torn’ fragment from the general duration of reality) and static shots. The analysis of a number of films that use the long take as a basic technique allows identifying a range of authorial approaches that reinterpret the dialogue between statics and movement in the context of the phenomenon of image as a copy of a fragment of reality. Meanwhile, the form of the work may aspire to a conceptual gesture or remain within the boundaries of the narrative gravitating towards a realistic nature. The idea of the importance of the dialogue between static and moving images, especially in the context of the long take, is not new. However, it is critical to identify specific strategies of the director’s exploration of the category of ‘moment’, such as: a close dissection of the ‘moment of transition’ of one type of an image into another (static into dynamic or vice versa, as in the films by A. Kiarostami); fixation of the ‘instant-failure’ of space or time (as in the films by Ch. Akerman and Ts. Ming-liang); and attention to working with the fixation of the ‘image of fact’ while addressing the dialogue of statics and movement (R. Depardon and G. Panfilov). This suggests a special transitional state of ‘statics-movement’ which is formed at the boundary of the properties of the photographic and the long cinematographic take. This state can also be identified as an aesthetic property of the long take as a film language technique.
Keywords: long take, photography, time, film language, static, movement, moment, ‘statics-movement’
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Received 05.03.2025
Accepted 29.03.2025
