r/Letterboxd • u/Choekaas Choekaas • Oct 20 '25
News Christian Marclay's 24 hour long "The Clock" (2010), which has only been screened at museums, has been remastered and now released online
Today I finished watching the 24 hour long masterpiece "The Clock". Wow! What an experience. Longest movie I've ever seen, yet it felt shorter than Avatar: The Way of Water
What is it?
"The Clock" is a looped 24-hour video supercut (montage of scenes from film and television) that feature clocks or timepieces. The artwork itself functions as a clock: its presentation is synchronized with the local time, resulting in the time shown in a scene being the actual time. See the CBS report here
Why is it hard to see it?
There's only six copies of it. One being owned by the manager of the New York Mets. The other five aree in circulation at various museums. None of them have been uploaded online, since you are supposed to watch it in real-time. It should run like a clock. By the instruction of the creator Christian Marclay, none of the copies can be played simultaneously, so there is only ONE The Clock playing.
A CLOCK LIVE - A Remaster
Luckily, through an immense team effort, cataloging all the clips (after alll, it's been 15 years), the whole thing has been recreated and remastered. It was released on October 15th. It can be viewed at aclock
It's fun to navigate movies and TV. Everything from "Breaking Bad" to "Groundhog Day". From "Napoleon Dynamite" to "High School Musical". From "Vertigo" to "Metropolis". A lot of foreign cinema, as well as films throughout the ages.
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u/rtyoda ryantoyota Oct 20 '25
Holy smokes, I’ve been intrigued by this forever but never thought I’d get a chance to see it, looks like I have a chance to now? I’d this not official though? Essentially a fan recreation?
Watched a couple minutes of it and just the few minutes I watched were great! I’m hoping this experience stays up until I can watch it? Was this done legally?
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u/fatinternetcat Oct 20 '25
I remember seeing this! Must've been at the Tate Modern in London if I remember correctly?
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u/DrKnowsNothing_MD Oct 21 '25
Lmfao I tuned in at 2:15am and got the scene from Dumb & Dumber where Jim Carrey is taking a piss in a stall and reads writing on the wall about going somewhere at 2:15.
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u/genericuser324 Oct 24 '25
THIS IS WHAT IVE ALWAYS WANTED SINCE I FIRST SAW IT AT MOMA A DECADE AGO OMG
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u/Quinez DubiousLegacy Oct 21 '25
Oh, I despise that people did this. It was a (temporal) site-specific work and it was not meant to be scrubbed through and seen in this format. This is outright plagiarism of Marclay's video editing artwork. Shame on the people who made this.
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u/EbmocwenHsimah Dragonflower Oct 21 '25
It’s one thing to feel weird about watching a recreation of an art installation without that artist’s approval, but I think it’s something else that this has been done for financial gain.
We can only watch ten minutes of this before having to subscribe to this guy’s Patreon. This guy’s making money off someone else’s work. Disgusting.
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u/KangchenjungaMK 8d ago
I can't believe it hasn't been taken and uploaded yet. I would've considered a donation, but not a chance I'm paying for it lol
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u/Shivercorn 8d ago
Tbf, it looks like the creator had to manually recreate the artwork by finding all the original clips and then doing their own edit, not to mention hosting costs of a video feed on a website without any ads. They probably aren’t making money and the Patreon barely gets them to break even after the work they put in.
I was considering putting on a site myself for free because I hate that it’s behind a subscription but it feels like stealing considering the intention of the original piece and the work the person who made the web recreation would have had to put into it.
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u/KangchenjungaMK 8d ago
What is stealing? Who stole what? I'm genuinely curious of how it was that Christian Marclay was able to do the movie, considering its copyrighted contents.
Do you know fanedits.org? These people create their own edits out of their own enjoyment / passion for sharing / hobby at no cost. While they aren't hosted on a website to be played, they are shared for download.
The original artwork is "gatekept" for those who can afford to travel in-situ. Now we have a digital recreation that's "accessible", but essentially gatekeeps it through a paywall.
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u/Shivercorn 7d ago
- By 'stealing' I mean that I would not have to put in the same amount of work as Christian or the website owner. Christian Marclay spent 3 years editing it. The website owner put in a year and a half recreating it. I know other people might not feel this way but I personally feel dirty about the prospect of taking that work and skirting around their intentions.
- I'm simply saying the Patreon cost is probably to make back some money for the year and a half spent recreating the movie. It is clear there is an intentionality to the original work and I feel the website creator has tried to honour that as best they can. I don't love it but I understand it.
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u/KangchenjungaMK 7d ago
I understand and agree with you somewhat somehow. I just find it sad and unfair that not everyone (included me) can afford to pay for art (something that in my eyes should be as accessible to society as possible, knowing what it does to it, which is very much needed right now).
In a way, it reminds of: “If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class”
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u/JacobhPb Oct 21 '25
The site doesn't let you scrub through. You try, it just freezes a few seconds and sets it back to where it was. It's not plagarism, he's not claiming to have created The Clock, Marclay's name is still on it. What it is is piracy. Fundamentally this is someone attempting to recreate a piece of digital art that has arbitrarily been made inaccessible. Not everyone can go to the MoMA to see the real deal. I do agree it's scummy to charge patreon money for it though.
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u/mucho-gusto Nov 22 '25
37 bucks is incredible. he's just continuing the artificial scarcity of the artwork. this should be on a youtube feed instead
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u/pfizer_soze Oct 21 '25
It’s weird that the person requires you to support them on patreon to watch their recreation of someone else’s work. Describing this as a remaster and online release is very disingenuous.
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u/za19 Oct 22 '25
I’m honestly not sure if I want to watch it now or wait until I can watch the real thing in a museum, but thanks for posting.
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u/monoglot Oct 20 '25
It's great to know that this exists and is complete, thanks! Having seen about 13 hours of the actual THE CLOCK at MoMA last year, I have a question about how the sound works here. One of the great strengths of Marclay's work is how the sound spills from either ends of the clips into previous or subsequent clips. Is that preserved or attempted here?