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If serious movies are long, then consider Anders Weberg’s Ambiancé (LOL BIANCÉ) the Holocaust of cinema. The Swedish director, who you will not find on Wikipedia, just released his first “short” trailer for his 720-hour magnum opus, about Art Things. From the trailer’s official Vimeo:
Ambiancé is 720 hours long (30 days) and will be shown in its full length on a single occasion syncronised in all the continents of the world and then destroyed.
In the piece Ambiancé space and time is intertwined into a surreal dream-like journey beyond places and is an abstract nonlinear narrative summary of the artist’s time spent with the moving image.
Surreal and dream-like?! Where have we seen that on the back of every Focus Features DVD box for the past decade??? To be fair, I have not and will not ever watch this trailer. I used to work for one of the douchiest theaters on the planet, so I’ve had my dose of ultra-long celluloid vomit (quick shout-out to Gilles Deleuze from A to Z). No review (no matter how many untranslatable French words you italicize!) will convince me to spend 30 days watching a self-indulgent homage to an artist’s “relationship with the moving image as a means of creative expression.” I’m ready to tap out at two and a half hours, which is way under this transparent attempt at notoriety via Guinness World Records. You know what else was long? Pharrell’s 24-hour music video for “Happy,” aka Hell’s national anthem.
In fact, here’s a little Pepsi Challenge for you, Weberg: let me slow down and strobe footage of Justin Bieber watching his own music videos for 30 days, then let’s compare audience reactions. Were both dreamlike? Or more nightmarish, even? Surreal? Unbeliebable? Awful? Grating? Unnecessary? Nearly criminal? For those of you still interested, the film will be released in 2020, and please seek help.