Episode 2: The Long Take

The second conversation in the series brings together two contributors who have never met before: the documentary filmmaker Hana Morrow, whose Low Tide at Six is in our films archive, and the critic Leïla Ferrand, who has been writing about slow cinema for a decade. Kasper Nyholm recorded them over a video call between Glasgow and Montréal, with a six-hour time difference and one dropped connection.

In this episode

• How Hana edited a year of footage to the rhythm of the tide
• Leïla's argument that waiting is an event, not an absence
• The difference between a slow shot and a patient one
• Why both of them distrust music in documentaries
• A disagreement about the last shot of Hollow Road

From the conversation

Leïla Ferrand: What I noticed in your film is that you never cut away when something is about to happen. You stay. Even when the thing that happens is only the water turning.

Hana Morrow: That was the rule. I only used footage from the moment the pickers set out to the moment the tide came back. So the scenes end when the water decides, not when I decide.

Leïla Ferrand: That is what I mean by patient, rather than slow. A slow shot is long because the director likes it. A patient shot is long because the thing in front of the camera needs that long.

The audience can always tell the difference between a shot held for their sake and a shot held for the director's. They forgive the first one anything.

Hana Morrow: I think that is right. Though I have held shots for my own sake too. Everyone has.

The full conversation runs to thirty-eight minutes. The dropped connection is at minute twenty-two and we have left it in.