Sharon Lockhart in Person

The long static shot has been used to beautiful, often demanding, ends by filmmakers as diverse as the Lumière Brothers, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Andy Warhol, and James Benning. For Pine Flat, Sharon Lockhart, who is also a photographer, collaborated with a group of youths living in a small town in the Sierra foothills. As they worked together over three years, an intimacy developed, and the kids shared the places they valued and the rhythms of their everyday life. Slowly a film emerged: a girl reading alone, a boy asleep outside, some kids playing in the river, others traipsing among the trees are depicted in twelve ten-minute shots. While Pine Flat provides a portrait of rural life and landscape, the pregnant shots also contain the promise of narrative. Tender and endearing, the film gives the young people unusually extended time on the screen, and allows us to contemplate how we experience the passing of time.