Sightlines · a concept

series of time

incompossible simultaneous presents (present-of-past, present-of-present, present-of-future coexisting).

On screen: contradictory presents coexisting; before/after as becoming

Last Year at Marienbad (1961) — Incompossible simultaneous versions — they met / they did not, the gown white then black within one seeming conversation — each true while it lasts, none canceling the others; the idea Deleuze draws…
Dead of Night (1945) — Craig is simultaneously arriving, having already arrived in a recurring dream he can never finish, and holding an ending he knows but has not yet reached
Rashomon (1950) — The four accounts are not a memory sequence but rival claims on one afternoon — contradictory presents coexisting with no before/after to order them
Lola (1961) — Three ages of the same life are on screen simultaneously in three bodies, in the present tense — Demy uses no dated flashback, so the presents coexist instead of succeeding one another
West Side Story (1961) — The contrapuntal 'Tonight' quintet, which layers multiple characters' incompatible desires simultaneously rather than cutting between them
La Jetée (1962) — The circular structure where the death the man witnessed as a child is revealed to be his own — the boy seeing and the man dying coexist as one instant inhabited twice.
Two for the Road (1967) — Cars from different periods occupying the same stretch of tarmac, the couple effectively passing themselves — five journeys each played as a live present rather than as a past recalled from the…
The Swimmer (1968) — the assembly refuses to smooth Ned's day into an auditable chronology, reproducing Cheever's trick of seasons turning while Ned insists it is still the same summer afternoon
Medea (1969) — The Centaur is split into the mythic hybrid (horse-body prosthetic, seam deliberately visible) and a fully human man, both eventually in the same frame, the human one explaining that the sacred one…
Demons (1971) — Matsumoto 'splinters the revenge plot with fantasy inserts, replayed scenes, and imagined outcomes, so that Gengobe's fevered mind keeps rehearsing violence before committing it' — the rehearsed…
Don't Look Now (1973) — The love scene intercuts the act of intimacy with the couple afterward dressing to go out — two non-simultaneous presents braided as coexisting, distinct from a dated flashback
The Travelling Players (1975) — The signature in-shot dislocation: the camera follows marchers, loses them, and when they return within the same unbroken take the year and faction have changed — two contradictory presents…
Cria! (1976) — Geraldine Chaplin's dual casting as the remembered dying mother and as the grown Ana narrating two decades later, so mother-past and daughter-future coexist in one body.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) — Everyone around Newton ages across decades while he stays unchanged; intercut eras and a continuous present collapsing past, future, memory, and premonition
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) — The modern scenes were shot in and around the same Dorset locations, often on the same days, so the two centuries are literally continuous in space: two coexisting presents rather than a past…
City of Pirates (1984) — The man on the island inhabited by several people at once — not one man recalling different pasts but contradictory presents coexisting in one body.
Taipei Story (1985) — 'Two people who love each other but face in opposite directions in time,' one toward baseball glory and traditional male honor, the other toward jobs, apartments and emigration — staged in the same…
Terrorizers (1986) — Contradictory presents in the last movement coexisting, with neither demoted to dream — the reason audiences still argue about what they watched.
La Bamba (1987) — The film opens with the crash premonition, so every subsequent scene — the family dinner, the recording session, the coin toss for the airplane seat — is played against a known ending; the crash…
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) — Charlie Rouse appears doubled — as the young saxophonist in the tour footage and as an older man explaining him — with the interviews reaching back across Monk's life while the archival body stays…
Back to the Future Part II (1989) — The third act restages 1955 from a hidden vantage: the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and the skateboard chase play again with the second Marty edited around footage and blocking from the 1985 film…
Mystery Train (1989) — Three stories temporally overlaid into one concurrent night; the single gunshot, 'Blue Moon,' and lobby clock lock coexisting presents together without merging them
Days of Being Wild (1990) — Inscribed dates and times (April 16, 1960, 3 p.m.) held as now and already-lost; the 1960 timeline split across emotionally incompatible registers
Daughters of the Dust (1991) — The Unborn Child narrates from a future not yet arrived, so before and after coexist within the single 1902 day as a becoming
JFK (1991) — 'Vertical editing' drills into a single second of November 22, returning obsessively to the same instant as coexisting contradictory versions rather than advancing in time.
The Double Life of Véronique (1991) — Two women with one face live the same gift and heart-flaw at once in two cities; the recurring Van den Budenmayer concerto carries the same instant as aspiration, catastrophe, and residue.
Moving (1993) — At dawn after the fire and the water, the girl emerges to greet herself — two presents held in a single image rather than a present recalling a past.
Before the Rain (1994) — The triptych's chronological impossibility: a character glimpsed dead in one panel is alive in a later one, and an event referred to as past in one panel has not yet occurred in another…
Pulp Fiction (1994) — The three chapters and bookend run out of sequence, so Vincent is dead in 'The Gold Watch' yet alive in 'The Bonnie Situation' and the diner finale — contradictory presents held together…
Three Colors: Red (1994) — The judge's past is not a dated flashback but a present-of-the-past coexisting with the present-of-the-present, happening simultaneously in Auguste's body across the street
A Borrowed Life (1995) — The wall calendar: the father reckons his life in Japanese imperial reign years while his children learn the Republican era count — two mutually exclusive presents at one dinner table, and the film…
Dead Man Walking (1995) — Churgin intercuts the completed murder flashback with the execution, forcing both presents to coexist with no privileged image.
Twelve Monkeys (1995) — The predestination loop: the plague has already occurred, Cole's mission causes the catastrophe it means to prevent, and the airport reveal collapses the boy's past and the man's present into one…
Underground (1995) — The cellar's ongoing 1944 and the surface's post-war decades held as simultaneous nows, cut between as adjacent spaces rather than as flashback, so the film's time is experienced as architecture.
Jackie Brown (1997) — The Del Amo mall money exchange shown three times from three viewpoints with chronology intact — the same present fractured into incompatible coexisting versions, the third aligned with Jackie's…
Open Your Eyes (1997) — the editing looping, repeating and contradicting itself so incompatible 'nows' coexist rather than resolving into one timeline
Out of Sight (1998) — In the seduction, anticipation and fulfillment occupy the screen simultaneously — before and after coexisting as a single braided present.
Perfect Blue (1998) — Scenes bleeding into rehearsals, dreams and television-within-television, so rehearsal-now, broadcast-now and dream-now coexist with none subordinated as a dated past.
Run Lola Run (1998) — The three runs and the snapshot flash-forwards present contradictory coexisting 'nows' — the same passer-by brushed in the same instant spins into entirely different futures from run to run
Go (1999) — Three quasi-independent stories share one timeline and geography — three presents of a single Christmas Eve coexisting, the same pivotal moments re-angled
Final Destination (2000) — The premonition of Flight 180 is neither a dated flashback nor a dream: the plane explodes with the characters aboard and also without them, and the film's entire engine is that the first version…
Yi Yi (2000) — The father's reunion with a lost love in Tokyo runs in parallel with the daughter's first romance in Taipei — Yang's parallel-generations design makes one experience occur at two ages simultaneously…
Donnie Darko (2001) — the Primary and Tangent Universes as contradictory coexisting presents; the loop ending rhymes the last image with the first so two presents press against each other
Moulin Rouge! (2001) — The film's through-composed pastiche makes 1899 and the late twentieth century co-true in a single utterance; neither period is demoted to quotation, and the dramaturgy depends on the audience…
Mulholland Drive (2001) — The bright wish-fantasy and the devastated waking life given as incompossible simultaneous presents rather than a flashback sequence
What Time Is It There? (2001) — Taipei and Paris held as two simultaneous, equally live presents that 'never quite synchronize' — no flashback, no dated former present.
Hero (2002) — The same lovers rendered loyal in one telling and betraying in another — contradictory presents the film holds at once rather than resolving into a single past
The Hours (2002) — 1923, 1951 and 2001 are never dated as one another's past; each is a single present-tense day, cross-cut as co-true rather than as flashback.
21 Grams (2003) — The same character held in contradictory present-tense states — Paul healthy then dying then recovering, Cristina sober then shattered then vengeful — before/after dissolved into coexisting presents…
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) — The twist holds several incompatible presents of Su-mi at once — protective sister, cruel stepmother, guilty survivor — none demoted to mere fantasy; the film refuses a single true layer
Elephant (2003) — Overlapping timelines: the same day re-entered from different students' vantages, the hallway crossing returning from the opposite angle, contradictory presents coexisting
Oldboy (2003) — The editing flashes between Oh Dae-su's recorded journal entries and his present-tense pursuit, holding contradictory presents that coexist.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) — The Time-Turner third act runs the same hours a second time while the first is still in progress, two presents coexisting in one stretch of time — the closed predestination loop taken from 12…
Howl's Moving Castle (2004) — Her body "drifts older or younger from scene to scene" with no age established as the true one, so the girl and the crone coexist as contradictory presents rather than succeeding each other.
Mind Game (2004) — The closing accelerating montage scatters forward and backward across the characters' possible and actual lives, refusing a single fixed ending.
Saw II (2005) — The late reversal that the house footage and the interrogation are not synchronous: two presents held on screen as one, with before and after rearranged by the cut.
Inland Empire (2006) — Los Angeles and snowbound Łódź, Nikki and Susan, the Rabbits' sitcom — contradictory presents coexisting rather than ordered on a timeline
Marie Antoinette (2006) — Post-punk and new wave (Bow Wow Wow, Gang of Four, New Order) over eighteenth-century image, unaccented contemporary American speech, and the pale blue Converse in a montage cutaway — 1780 and 1979…
Syndromes and a Century (2006) — The diptych: the same interview, characters and lines replayed in the urban Bangkok hospital, two presents that rhyme without either being the flashback or memory of the other
(500) Days of Summer (2009) — The "Expectations" / "Reality" split screen at the party: a present of the future and a present of the present run side by side through the same evening until reality swallows the frame.