So far, most of the summer has been hasty and rushed. Pages flying off the calendar in fast motion. Days, opportunities, connections slip away. Truly. So when I saw that the Echo Park Film Center was having a one-evening showing of slow-motion films the event looked appealing. I liked the idea of slow. If nothing else I could say I went. Or I could meditate while images presented themselves to me on a slow-motion platter. My brain could rest.

So I left my daughter at home with my husband and went out to enjoy myself solo. Which I did thoroughly, somewhat to my surprise. It turned out to be quite a rich cinematic experience (this from someone who rushed out to see The Devil Wears Prada).

The evening was a hundred films of about one-minute each. Some were found footage, most of them were staged, some semi-animation. The degrees of slow-motion varied hugely. Much of the pleasure of watching them came from the juxtapositions of films.

Paper clips fell onto desks! Matches were lit! A man hammered a succession of glass panes. The inevitable mushroom cloud. In one of the funnier bits, a man and a woman played scrabble in real time. After a while the woman said, “Are you going to go?” A donkey brayed. A man dressed in a space-alien suit peered at his own reflection in shop window. Those were some of my favorites.

True, some of them felt like art school projects, but in itself that’s not so evil.

About fifteen people were in the theater. Echo Park Film Center refers to these events as microcinema. They made popcorn in a back room and passed around one single giant tub of it. After a while a man in an overcoat with a bouquet of flowers, smelling of strong spirits, had sole possession of the popcorn. I think he was French.

After about 65 or 70 films I began to feel impatient. So I went out to the street, got back into my pumpkin and sped home.

Photo: Driveway on Ewing St.
By Cindy Bennett