An eight-hour slow-motion film starring only sheep with no plot, dialogue or actors has been unveiled and plans this September for a red-carpet premiere and global webcast.
Like the Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones movies before it, Baa Baa Land is financed with American money but made in the UK by mainly British talent. It was shot entirely on location in Essex, a few miles from London.
Is it also the dullest movie ever made? “We think so”, says Peter Freedman, its producer. “We hope that audiences will too.”
The film is a meditation itself, a dream, an enchantment … a tonic for the soul”. It is also an example of “Slow Cinema”, a genre of art films known for long takes, slow pace and lack of action or narrative.
Baa Baa Land has no car-chases, explosions or star names. All it has is sheep and fields. According to the authors: “Baa Baa Land is the first screen epic entirely starring sheep. A cast of hundreds… all of them sheep. Count them if you can – but don’t stress if you can’t. Sit back, wind down, drift off … to sheep.”
Long, loving takes – some up to an hour long – show the sheep in question, standing around in fields, doing very little. Baa Baa Land’s length of eight hours may put off some but it makes the film only the nineteenth longest film of all time – five minutes shorter than Empire, Warhol’s 1964 film, and the same length as his 1967 work, The Imitation of Christ.
The longest movie ever made is Logistics, a Swedish experiential art film made in 2012, and lasting 857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours.
Baa Baa Land’s rivals for the title of the dullest film ever made include Paint Drying, a 10.5 hour movie about drying paint, classified last year by the British Board of Film Censors as “suitable for all”.
