Time in Movies and Animation

As questions about time suddenly came pouring out, I needed a way to hold onto them before they disappeared. My approach was to apply these questions to how time is portrayed in movies and animation—with the primary purpose of keeping those questions alive. This exploratory study applies twenty questions about time to eighteen films and animated works. Fourteen initial questions were supplemented by six questions arising during the analysis. Time appears as lifespan, property and currency, as repetition, inversion and relative passage, and as memory, relationships and generations. The examples are compared and the questions provisionally organized into seven analytical areas. The central contribution is a set of questions accompanied by films as materials for further inquiry. Readers may freely add or revise the questions and works, or develop entirely different analyses.