L'Avventura // The Time Image

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960, 144 mins

Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura stands as one of the defining works of what philosopher Gilles Deleuze later describes as the “time image.” Rather than driving forward through clear cause and effect, the film allows time to loosen, stretch, and drift. Actions stall, motivations remain opaque, and absence becomes more important than resolution.

When a woman disappears during a trip to a remote island, the search gradually gives way to something stranger and more unsettling, a sustained attention to duration, mood, and emotional disconnection. In L’Avventura, time is no longer subordinate to story. It is the subject itself, unfolding through waiting, wandering, and the quiet weight of moments left unresolved.

This screening launches The Time Image, a new Stray Cat series exploring cinema that asks us not to follow time, but to experience it.

The Time Image celebrates narrative deconstruction and alternative approaches to filmmaking, showcasing independent and guerrilla-style cinema that challenges conventional storytelling.

Named after French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of the "time image," the series draws from his distinction between two modes of cinema. While the "movement image" propels viewers through cause-and-effect narratives where action drives the story forward, the "time image" asks viewers to dwell in moments, experience duration directly, and engage with memory, contemplation, and the gaps between events. In time image films, characters often observe rather than act, and meaning emerges through temporal layering rather than plot progression.

Previously known as Mumblecore Madness, the series has been reframed through Deleuze's philosophical lens. While "mumblecore" suggested a specific aesthetic, The Time Image better captures our broader focus: films that construct meaning through time itself, valuing duration over action, stillness over momentum, and complexity over convention.

Featuring selections from various countries and eras, The Time Image invites audiences to embrace cinema that resists easy resolution and celebrates the richness of human connection.

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Host or Publisher Stray Cat Film Center