Coming Soon
DON’T CUT: THE BEACON GUIDE TO LONG TAKES
2024
Director
BEACON CINEMA
Starring
EVERYBODY BUT THE EDITOR
Runtime
HOW LONG YA GOT?
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The long, unbroken movie shot: Is it the ultimate film bro indulgence full of dazzlingly dextrous, self-satisfied complexity? Or is it, in fact, the metaphysical essence of pure cinema? Well, we say why can’t it be both?! Join us for DON’T CUT, an original Beacon mix-show celebrating the many pleasures of cinema’s greatest long takes!
Stretching things out a bit, the long take can represent a return to the primal authenticity present only at the origins of film-making. At first, there was no such thing as editing. The immoble camera was set up on a tripod, while the dramatic scenes unfolded one after the other in a succession of single takes. Whatever visual complexity they had was provided by the camera's powerful depth of field, allowing multiple actions to occur in different sections or planes of the frame simultaneously. Editing brought in speed, rhythm, suspense. But what had been lost was the early films’ passionate contemplation of reality and an unmediated openness to the world. The spiritual aspect of contemplation is a governing principle in the finest examples of ‘long’ cinema. At the other end of the scale is the one-off set piece, very much made to be noticed, that signals the director's virtuosity. And over the course of cinema’s 100+ year history, some true virtuosos have applied their art to this feat. We love them all.
DON’T CUT is a jubilee of duration, mounted in the hopes that the long take will survive in artists' hearts as the emblem both of what cinema has been, and of what it may powerfully aspire to.
Stretching things out a bit, the long take can represent a return to the primal authenticity present only at the origins of film-making. At first, there was no such thing as editing. The immoble camera was set up on a tripod, while the dramatic scenes unfolded one after the other in a succession of single takes. Whatever visual complexity they had was provided by the camera's powerful depth of field, allowing multiple actions to occur in different sections or planes of the frame simultaneously. Editing brought in speed, rhythm, suspense. But what had been lost was the early films’ passionate contemplation of reality and an unmediated openness to the world. The spiritual aspect of contemplation is a governing principle in the finest examples of ‘long’ cinema. At the other end of the scale is the one-off set piece, very much made to be noticed, that signals the director's virtuosity. And over the course of cinema’s 100+ year history, some true virtuosos have applied their art to this feat. We love them all.
DON’T CUT is a jubilee of duration, mounted in the hopes that the long take will survive in artists' hearts as the emblem both of what cinema has been, and of what it may powerfully aspire to.