Just Setting Your Movie in the Past or Future Does NOT Meet the Theme Requirement...

If you want to get specific Memento doesn't actually revolve around time, it revolves around memories. Just because the film is disjunctively cut doesn't mean it's revolved around time. I could cut a short film about rabid gerbils sailing away on a sailboat and jumble the cuts but it still wouldn't be about time. Memento is about a man with a short term memory and it's made to make you feel like you know as much about what is going on as he does. Now if you want to argue the fact that memories are a facet of time then we could argue the fact that "remember when" could be an entry for time fest because they're remembering the past. Time should be a character in the film, much like love was a character in the film with every love fest entry.
 
Memento plays with narrative a lot because the way the main character sees and deals with the world and time is different but that's not the main reason it's on the list.

It's implicit in the phrase "short term" memory. The guy has to solve a mystery using only short term memory, which means he's constantly trying to outrace his own short memory span before he has to start over again.

The "what if" of that movie is what would you do if your life started over each day from scratch. which is very much the same as getting in a time machine before your wife died and waking up much later in the future and finding notes to yourself all over the place to describe what's been going on over the last year, and you had to try and solve a murder mystery within that time each day.

If Memento was told linearly, with an omniscient third person narrative it would still qualify because it would be about a man who has lost a chunk of time and ... because again ... EACH DAY IS A 24 HOUR TIME LOCK or TICKING CLOCK ... if he doesn't unravel his wife's entire murder mystery by the time he goes to sleep he knows he will have to start over again the next day. So the movie is comprised of several vignettes, each comprised of a ticking clock structure. Looking at the story in the Macro, its an option lock because he could keep trying this for an eternity. But each day is a time lock because he's fighting to put the pieces together before he looses his memory again.

So don't be fooled into thinking that the only reason it's on the list is because it's presented non-linearly.

And yes it's about memory, which is linked to time. It's as if a certain period of time never happened for him.

And yes you could make an argument for "Remember When" though perhaps not as strong. In remember when they are centrally concerned with maintaining a connection I think. A connection broken by his disjointed memory, true, and yes they are all kind of longing for things to be like they were, but the active story driver is not putting together puzzle pieces of the past as in Momento but trying to find the person that used to be there and maintaining a connection. In Momento, the PROTAGONIST/MAIN CHARACTER who we see the movie through in a pretty much first person kind of way is actively concerned with connecting the dots through time. In Remember When time is not disjointed at all for the MAIN CHARACTER because she's the main character not the man. And while she longs for a time gone by, she really is looking for glimpses of the man she married behind his illness, not piecing together the past. He's doing that but he's not the main character and we don't see the movie through his eyes the way we do with Momento.

Still having said that, Remember When could arguably qualify for Time Fest due to the fact that his disjointed view of time is the obstacle in their relationship. If that movie were entered in Time Fest however, it would be nice if that idea were played up more some how.
 
Heh - thanks,
We'll be looking for reasons to keep movies in vs. looking for reasons to keep movies out. Memento would be a sure thing I think. Remember when would probably require some discussion.

I just threw this sticky up regarding the future so people wouldn't bust their butts on elaborate sets and weeks of VFX only to get told their movie about how a young boy matures due to his relationship with his pet geneklepharb won't be accepted into the fest merely because it's set in the year 3025.

Now if it was a boy from the present who accidentally found himself in the year 3025 and matured because he met a pet geneklepharb there and this growth was dramatized by the boy's heartbreaking but selfless decision to not let the geneklepharb stow away in the time machine with him when returning to the 21st century ... then, after puking, I'd have to say that would qualify :D
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Now if it was a boy from the present who accidentally found himself in the year 3025 and matured because he met a pet geneklepharb there and this growth was dramatized by the boy's heartbreaking but selfless decision to not let the geneklepharb stow away in the time machine with him when returning to the 21st century ... then, after puking, I'd have to say that would qualify :D
Click to expand...

Dang, you stole my idea.:undecided Although I did have an hourglass figure holding an hourglass, so hopefully that'll at least balance out the puking.
 
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..just remember Filmboy that if you show a sun dial, it should be of the "suns r' us" brand or it probably will not qualify. in the like manner, if you use a watch to satisfy the shot it must be a 1967 seiko. all other time keeping varieties of these types do not keep accurate time, and showing them will automatically place your film into the "discard and laugh at" grouping ..UNLESS there happens to be a slightly fermented RED grape in the shot which has a molecular weight exactly equal to the gravitational pull needed to correct your inadequate time keeping device's synch.
 
i would say that to "never gonna give you up", satisfies the thematic requirement of time, with infinitely more heart than you or I could fathom.
 
Folks, we keep getting questions about "would this idea qualify?" and... y'know, sometimes it seems like people are approaching the "time" theme from the wrong angle. You shouldn't be thinking of time as a "band-aid" or a "requirement" for your film, you should be embracing the concept of time thoroughly. Revel in it. Roll around in it. It's the theme. It's the core. It's not like the "camera" requirement in lovefest, where you could just put a camera anywhere in the background and say "there, I met the requirement." Time is the theme. It's not incidental to the film, it should be at the core of the film.

Even if we give the go-ahead to some of the more limited/questionable ways to satisfy the requirement, remember that the voters will have their say. And those films that embrace and exploit the theme to its fullest will probably do better in the voting.

I'm tempted to say "if you have to even ask whether it meets the theme, then you can probably do better." If you've got a film that so thoroughly definitely meets the theme that you don't even have to ask, that's how you know you're satisfying the theme! :thumbsup:
 
My 2 cents and maybe this is just me, but giving a theme of "time" doesn't generate ideas so much as think about old ideas that could be bent into fitting the theme. That doesn't mean a space alien war movie, but it just means a decent idea I like that doesn't work in isolation using a required "theme" as a foothold to actually being made into a script.


Hence, I believe in a loose interpretation of the theme. (granted you guys do leave the rules loose and are by no means Nazis, but just a thought about why many movies push the limits on breaking the rules)
 
I've GOT IT!

I just finished my masterpiece! It's taken me all night to write it.

How's this...


A newscaster who doesn't appreciate anyone finds himself covering a lame story on GroundHog Day when all of a sudden, he finds that he's stuck 'reliving' that same "Ground Hog Day" over and over and over, until he gets it right and learns to treat people better and appreciate life and love...

*whew*

This is gonna be one awesome film you guys, I wouldn't even enter y'alls, I mean - I even think I might be able to get Bill Murray to star in mine!

:laugh:
 
What if I remade Groundhog day and casted Flava Flav.

Clock in movie....Check.
Time Theme.......Check.
Glass of Red Wine....Check.
Rick Astley........Check (Flav will be remixing the great classic)

have I missed anything?

Rogan
 
But what if I had two friends who, in order to get cheap rent, have to move into an all-women building. And then they have to dress up like women so they are not discovered.

But set it all in 13th Century China.

Would that qualify?
 
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