How Long Is “Associated”?

Brooklyn, 4 July 2004. Jenny Perlin spends her entire Independence Day filming her neighbourhood supermarket. Although the front of the building is dilapidated and the sign is so old you can barely read it, this shop has everything a larger supermarket has, "and sometimes even more," according to its proud owner Mr. Leem. He and his brother work 14-hour days in the supermarket. In an off-screen interview, he tells about the shop's history and about his favourite music: Johnny Cash and Najwa Karam. Every two hours, Perlin grabbed her 16 mm Bolex camera to shoot two and a half minutes of film (the time it takes for the spool to unwind). This "arbitrary" style of filmmaking emphasises not the action, but the rhythm. The beauty of the shop is not in the extraordinary events taking place there, but in the fixed patterns of plodding and rummaging.