Expressing Duration with Digital Micromanipulations: Digital Experimental Documentaries of James Benning, Sharon Lockhart, and Thom Andersen

Abstract:Countering Babette Mangolte’s and D. N. Rodowick’s assertion that it is difficult to express duration in digital cinema, this article argues that an array of micro-level manipulations of the lens-based image with digital technology—color correction, digital dissolve, and extreme slow motion, all of which I call “digital micromanipulations”—are capable of deepening the presentation and exploration of cinematic duration and temporality. Drawing on the recent digital films of James Benning, Sharon Lockhart, and Thom Andersen, I demonstrate that the directors’ different uses of digital micromanipulations should be viewed as extending their experimental approaches to documentary time and aesthetics in the celluloid-based cinema.