In Charlie Kaufman's underrated 2008 film Synecdoche, New York, we followed Philip Seymour Hoffman as he attempted to build a literal larger-than-life theater production, in which New York City was recreated in a warehouse and the play takes as long as life itself. Ambiancé, a film by Swedish artist Anders Weberg, shares a creative kindred spirit, as the movie is 720 hours long, and includes a 72-minute teaser which can be watched above.
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The film promises to be an exploration of the director's relationship with film, where "space and time are intertwined into a surreal, dream-like journey." Weberg describes it as "a sort of memoir movie," yet the teaser trailer is a nonlinear narrative that "has the intent to convey the mood and tempo for the full piece." In the 72-minute clip, we see a variety of grainy clips of mysterious figures, sepia-toned landscapes, and other memory-like images—all blanketed by a tense and dramatic orchestral score.The teaser will remain online until the end of July, but then will totally disappear until 2016 when the first "short" (ahem) full trailer will premiere—clocking in at 7 hours and 20 minutes. This will be followed by a longer trailer in 2018 that's 72 hours. Finally, the full movie will be released in 2020—a whooping, 720 hour feature that lasts a full month. There's no word on if there will be weekend-long intermissions or complimentary popcorn as of yet.There's another caveat to this already out-there project (of course, giving Weberg the benefit of the doubt that this final product is real). The director plans to show the full film only once in 2020, premiering it simultaneously on every continent… before destroying it for good.If Ambiancé is all it claims to be, it will trump the ten-day-long Modern Times Foreveras the longest movie ever made. We'd bet money that the full feature will be as experimental as the teaser, with just as little narrative. So if you happen to show up a week late, you won't need a friend to spend a few hours catching you up to speed.
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