Constant

One might think that a 40-minute film, about the initiation of standardised measurements into human society, and its consequences, could be quite dry. While Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner’s Constant is certainly replete with academic considerations, it’s an artistic, febrile and, in one moment, surprisingly emotive exploration of the subject. The latest film in their ongoing ‘Monsters, Measures and Metabolisms’ project – after 2020’s thought-provoking A Demonstration – it combines re-enactment and dot cloud animation to animate a fascinating discourse about the intentions and implications of measurement.

This discourse is framed by the recollection of a conversation in a conference room of the National Physical Laboratory, the official home of measurements in the UK, between the filmmakers and staff from the NPL about filming there. That this conversation is rendered in computer-generated dot imagery is perhaps an early indicator of their success. However, it is also a key visual signifier of the trajectory of measurement across the centuries, from using the human body to determine relative size, to an abstracted calculation in a vacuum.

Constant intersperses these discussions with apparent digressions about key phases of history, including the arduous 18th-century journeys of Pierre Mechain (Derek Elwood) and Jean-Baptiste Delambre (Michael Jayes) to help triangulate the distance from pole to equator and thus devise the metre. This is presented with just one of the film’s visual flourishes – a warped circular image that reflects the primacy of the earth itself in our methods of calculation – but also comes with solemnly tragic consequences for Mechain. Elsewhere, the chronologically earlier development of land privatisation is addressed and begins to feed into a growing narrative about exactly how egalitarian and just the standardisation of measures has truly been, given its perceived purpose to allow the same access to all.

Directors, screenplay, editing: Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Cast: Cynthia Beatt, Derek Elwood, Michael Jayes, Theo Leanse
Producers: Guillaume Cailleau, Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Cinematography: Sasha Litvintseva
Sound: Beny Wagner
Music: dead hand
Production companies: CaSk Films (Germany)
Venue: Rotterdam International Film Festival (Ammodo Tiger Shorts Competition)
In English
40 minutes