| Director: | Vincent Patouillard |
| Producer: | Tony Scott |
| Runtime: | 48 hours |
| Country: | United Kingdom France |
The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World is an underground movie made in the UK that runs to 48 hours long,[1] created as a collaboration by respectively French[2] and British filmmakers Vincent Patouillard as directors and Anthony Scott in production in association with the Swiss Film Centre and the London Film-Makers' Co-op workshop (both located in London).[3] [4]
No actual footage was shot for the project, which instead consists entirely of outtakes, commercials, strips of undeveloped film, Academy leader, discarded reels recovered from Wardour Street dustbins, and other filmic cast-off material, creating a seemingly endless stream of news-reel and stock footage. Many segments are shown upside down, in reverse, or without sound. Some are shown many times over to wear out the viewer.[5] At one point, a commercial starring Donald Campbell advertising a boys' adventure magazine is looped forty times,[6] amounting to half an hour's worth of video. The film notably features Hermine Demoriane, Roger Dixon, Graham Stevens, Carla Liss and Martine Meringue.
It was originally released in 1968 at the Arts Lab and the Cinémathèque Française, being one of the first films made by London Film-Makers' Co-op.[7] It was subsequently aired at various locations within the next 2 years. As the title proclaims, it was indeed the longest film ever made at the time of its release (as British artist David Curtis notes, it most likely had the lowest production value to any film as well),[8] but has since been superseded by other films. The current longest film ever made is Logistics.[9]