TRACES OF TIME
2021
2K video | 2.39:1 | 60 min. | color | sound
Traces of Time is an art film about the experience, the passing and the notion of time. With an artistic eye and against the background of an intercultural dialogue, the film approaches the cultural-historical notions of time in India and their expression in the organic traces left by the flowing movement of everyday life in an Asian culture:
Sixty fixed shots show sixty different traditional family business places in Calcutta, Varanasi, New Delhi and Chandigarh. The center of each shot is a clock, in the midst of a mural still-life that has often grown over several generations: among photographs of relatives, gurus and the occasional prominent visitor to the store, next to images of goddesses and gods, often hanging high from the ceiling, the clocks are silent ambassadors of, as well as witnesses to, the passage of time.
Each minute of the film shows a section of a different place. Each of these places in turn opens up rich acoustic worlds. In addition to snatches of speech from people present in these half-private, half-public spaces, who are not visible in the shot, the omnipresent Bollywood songs, resounding from old radios, often form the soundtrack to the choreography of the clock hands going round in circles: in this 60-minute extraordinary film about ordinary places, the beat is set by the second-hand, the melody is written by life.
Camera / Sound / Edited: Kay Walkowiak
Sound Mix: Nigel Brown
Color Grading: Andi Winter
Production Assistants: Barbara Probst, Nandita Raman, Shuvankur Gosh
Supported by: Federal Chancellery of Austria, Federal State of Salzburg, City of Salzburg, City of Vienna
Sixty fixed shots show sixty different traditional family business places in Calcutta, Varanasi, New Delhi and Chandigarh. The center of each shot is a clock, in the midst of a mural still-life that has often grown over several generations: among photographs of relatives, gurus and the occasional prominent visitor to the store, next to images of goddesses and gods, often hanging high from the ceiling, the clocks are silent ambassadors of, as well as witnesses to, the passage of time.
Each minute of the film shows a section of a different place. Each of these places in turn opens up rich acoustic worlds. In addition to snatches of speech from people present in these half-private, half-public spaces, who are not visible in the shot, the omnipresent Bollywood songs, resounding from old radios, often form the soundtrack to the choreography of the clock hands going round in circles: in this 60-minute extraordinary film about ordinary places, the beat is set by the second-hand, the melody is written by life.
Camera / Sound / Edited: Kay Walkowiak
Sound Mix: Nigel Brown
Color Grading: Andi Winter
Production Assistants: Barbara Probst, Nandita Raman, Shuvankur Gosh
Supported by: Federal Chancellery of Austria, Federal State of Salzburg, City of Salzburg, City of Vienna
︎ Archive Film