cussions of narratives about actual events, transforming actual people into char-
acters. In fiction, the distinction between people and characters cannot be so
easily ignored. InAño Uña, this distinction is most clearly marked with Molly,
a name given to a fictional character, played, staged or given form by the actual
person Eireann Harper. To declare“the moments...[as] real”must be under-
stood as referring to the photographs (of which this film, along with other com-
ponents, are composed) consideredas photographs of family and friendsfrom the
filmmaker’s own world (including Eireann Harper), and not photographic fic-
tions (involving fictional characters like Molly). Hence, if“the moments...are
real”there are no photographs of Molly, at least not before the photographs are
ordered in a fictional story.
The Production of Pastness
InAño Uña, Eireann Harper’s photographic traces (in front of the camera) are
transformed into a photographic representation of the fictional character Molly.
Just like in mainstream entertainment film, the audience normally pays less at-
tention to the actor and focuses on the character, unless the actor is well known
(a star), which is not the case here. However, inAño Uña, the photographic
stills seem to inspire a certain kind of attention not towards Eireann Harper but
towards the moments of photographic exposure. Given that the sequences of
photographic stills are not considered familiar form of filmic expression for
most audiences, it seems to reinvest the culturally formative figure of pastness
connected to photographic images.
I believe that we come toAño Uñaand any other slide-motion film not only
with an experience of the narrative fiction film. The moment we start watching
and notice the unusual nature of this filmic mode of expression, the experience
of the slide-motion film is also prefigured in our experience of photography in a
very specific sense, namely the experience of photography as temporal displace-
ment. This photographic experience is what Roland Barthes discusses in his last
booksLa Chambre Claire() when he considers thenoemaof the photo-
graph as“that-has-been”(or,“the Intractable”). Even if the photographic still of
the narrative slide-motion film isnota photograph, I suggest that this specific
temporal experience of photography contributes to our experience of the narra-
tive slide-motion film, particularly when it comes to the experience of its tempo-
rality.
InAño Uña, every single frame is static and so are the objects within the
single frames. The sequence of images, on the other hand, is continuously un-
folding during the course of the film: it has a certain tempo, rhythm, and dura-
The Temporalities of the Narrative Slide Motion Film 93