Synopsis
A radically condensed essay on the history of motion pictures, expressed through images of the sea, ranging from 1895-2017.
The Unchanging Sea
2018 Directed by Eli Hayes, James Slaymaker …
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this film, in essence, is the epitome of everything Eli was capable of. an entire history of the medium within 16 minutes, condensed into something you could hold in your hand. i wished i talked to him more. endlessly kind, endlessly knowledgeable, and endlessly talented. we will never see the like of Eli Hayes again. i hope you are at peace my friend.
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Subsequent to months of groundwork compiling, and then eventually cutting (and cutting, and cutting), the final edit of James Slaymaker, Ben Nash & I's essay film, "The Unchanging Sea," is ultimately complete; a radically condensed meditation on the history of motion pictures, expressed through images of the sea, ranging from 1895-2017. The piece can be viewed via this link, if you would like to give it a watch. It's approximately fifteen minutes long: vimeo.com/263798197
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Both this and Aaron Berry's Fourth Era were posted around the same time. Both shorts blew me away, more than I have been by Letterboxd work in a while. I'm a fan of introspective work, moreso when that's applied to a grander picture - something absent in the majority of "personal" films; amateur or not. Both of these films are about the cinema, and also about the human condition, in ways that are relatively simple. This is something I've always loved about Hayes' work, but now am stoked to seen Berry explore more, too.
The simplicity of The Unchanging Sea makes writing a whole lot about it a bit moot. It's pure expressionism, and pure commentary, without doing much to…
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Adrift. Forever afloat. Blue winds of contemplation claim our feelings, thoughts and perceptions. To yield; to relinquish.
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite." - William Shakespeare -
Waves of longing. Images drowning on each other. At its best when the editing or the contrast of images have a certain violence to it.
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James Slaymaker, Ben Nash and Eli Hayes have made a film you want to see. Those are my thoughts after seeing the film. Those were my thoughts while watching the film.
I want to see this.
I couldn't and for that I am furious. My demands are simple: recognition. Give me a place where cinema was born for I won't satisfy to less."When I die, I want all of my vague, unpure, awfully shot material to be handed over to the filmmakers of the film, The Unchanging Sea, the one in which something lost was recreated."
- I will sign this.
It will read on my testament.
My testament won't be long. I will sign this.In our lives,…
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A dialectic piece covering over a century of cinema, colliding the Lumieres, Murnau, Griffith, Godard, Mann and others. Crashing the cinematic canon through a common, literally multi-layered perspective.
It's emotional, and most definitely passionate.
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The best film lesson from the talented Eli.
100 years of movie in 15 minutes.
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The unchanging sea of cinema, defined by its changes. The ebbs and flows, the dynamic differences, but a continual history and more importantly a continual love of cinema.
The layering here is beautiful I wish I could see this on a big screen somehow.
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