Neil Hollander

One of the Longest Films Ever Made

If you feel like you’re spending more and more time sitting in movie theaters, you're most probably not imagining it. Neil Hollander, an American writer, film director and producer, took this a step further and looked at the average movie length for the past decade, which proved his doubts that films have become longer, going just under two hours to more than 130 minutes in length. Back in the days, a 2 and-a-half hour running time was associated with art cinema and noisy abandon, while today most modern blockbusters such as Avengers and Furious 7 are straying from that time frame.

Yet, according to Neil Hollander, these three hour films are just a quick jog in comparison to the marathons that are the longest movie record-breakers. The type of entertainment is no longer distinguished by the length of a film, but nevertheless even Neil Hollander has to agree that those rare films that run to four, five, even ten hours, really tend to intimidate us with their weight, which can be off-putting even to the biggest cinema fans. In fact such films can only be viewed by people with serious film appreciation. In this list, Neil Hollander counts down his picks for the longest movies ever made. For that purpose he has narrowed down his choices, sticking only to full released, excluding any experimental films, director's cuts or extended versions.

“Shaw” from 1985 is a French documentary by Claude Lanzmana, which deals with the Holocaust (Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, meaning catastrophe, destruction) but without using any archival footage. Filmed on several locations at Chelmno camp, Auschwitz (which locals refuse to call it by its German name), Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto, this documentary as Neil Hollander reveals, mainly consists of interviews. The victims, locals who more or less tacitly collaborated with the Nazi camp guards themselves, describe their experiences in detail and slowly. Explained by Hollander at Zotero, The effect achieved by color picture and very vivid locations is quite shocking. In that way, the Holocaust doesn’t seem as a thing from a distant or impossible cruel past, but rather as a living experience, whose victims are still among us. Of all the films on the list, Neil Hollander informs that this is the easiest to find, and it is often displayed at appropriate events and symposia. It lasts ten hours and thirteen minutes.
 

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