Two Times In One Space

Two Times in One Space (1976/84) by Ivan Ladislav Galeta is one of the greatest works of Croatian experimental cinema. Adopting the feature film In the Kitchen (U kuhinji, 1968) by Nikola Stojanović, made in one black and white 12 minute shot, this work was created in the context of Galeta's research of ideas on expanded film, and was originally carried out in double projection within the same screen with a 9 second time shift (1976), which was fixed in the laboratory version by blending the two copies with a delay of 216 frames (1984). With a simple procedure of manipulating with the reel, Galeta perceptively changed the spatial-temporal aspect of narration, achieving nevertheless an intensified sense of displayed action by a continuous disintegration of the visibility of the current moment with the visibility of the past one. The transparent overlap of characters in motion and extended audibility of sound duration provided the film realism with elements of unrealistic, accentuated by new and unexpected narrative moments created by the time shift. Time, as the key aspect of the medium, is the formal element conceptualised by Galeta, but precisely the dramatic content, by means of two parallel actions that represent something usual and everyday and something exceptional, repetitive and unrepeatable, drew into the harmonisation and intensification of the existing structure, based on the experience of individual examination of the existential category of time. (Ana-Marija Koljanin)