Opus

When a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture.

Produced by the Nuffiled Foundation of Unit for the History of ideas, Time Is, directed by Don Levy (Herostratus), is an experimental collage film looking at the scientific problems connected with the nature of time. Alternating between original and `found' footage such as newsreels, sports footage, nature photography, the film uses a number of techniques including slow motion, time-lapse and single-frame filming, negative imagery and juxtaposition.

Research scientists experimenting with time warps are accidentally propelled forward into an unbearable future.

The first film made by Don Levy is a comedic satire of pretensions and perversions of British academia. Made for the Cambridge Film Society, it is shot in grainy black-and-white scuffed up to resemble aged prints of 1920s Surrealist films and displays an astringent sense of the ironies that can be achieved through juxtapositions of image, voice-over text, and music.

Images are rapidly cut to match the delivery of Margaret Robertson's voice-over.