Just a Moment in Time

In Just a Moment In Time Joerg Burger connects our inner and outer worlds of temporal experience with knowledge and insights gleaned from various disciplines and applied technologies, while capturing senses of time uniquely available to film. Twenty discursive and visual snapshots of time emerge in our presence. We participate in the process of thinking and observing an unfolding of compelling knowledge and practical ways to engage with time.  

Two forms of imagery underpin Burger's cinematic essay. On the one hand, talking portraits of contemporary experts on time express their take on temporality in clear, emphatic sentences articulated from the viewpoint of their respective disciplines. These first-hand accounts from the fields of archaeology, biology, physics, astronomy, psychoanalysis, mathematics, and music are immediately comprehensible. We are not distracted by specialized jargon as each expert vividly conveys their passionate fascination and in-depth research into the nature of time.  

On the other hand, evocative imagery draws attention to nature, objects, and working methods to reveal and audio-visually manifest various forms of time – these passages can be grasped as metaphors as well as very concrete evidence of temporal phenomena. For example, a public lot marked with linear parking spaces meets with a passing train, serving to demonstrate the mechanics of the space/time continuum. This image transitions to the restoration of vintage motion pictures as one observes the material mortality of a mechanical series of images on a film strip being converted into the “infinite” digital realm of numbers. 

The array of temporal explorations presented by Burger's film are framed by a prologue and an epilogue. The film opens with a spoken literary text conveying a subjective experience and imagination of time accompanied by imagery of a mountain appearing and disappearing in the fog. The film concludes with an epilogue in the form aerial flight imagery of a huge strip-mine in progress.  

Joerg Burger's Just a Moment In Time succeeds in creating a cinematically discursive embodiment of temporality, subtly distilling our knowledge and experience of time. (Marc Ries)  

Translation: Eve Heller