Paint Drying



Paint Drying is an epic ten-hour movie made by British journalist and filmmaker Charlie Lyne in 2016. It's about... paint drying. Literally. It's 607 minutes of a camera pointed at a wall freshly covered with white paint.

Technically considered a Documentary, Paint Drying is actually an explicit act of protest. A bit of background: Films in Great Britain must be classified and approved by the British Board of Film Classification before they can be shown in theaters; a film which has not passed the Board cannot be legally shown. However, classification is not provided as a public service -- filmmakers must pay the BBFC to watch and censor classify their work. As of early 2016, the BBFC charges a £101.50 (US$148) submission fee and £7.09 (US$10.50) per minute of film -- rates that can easily run into the thousands of pounds for a feature-length film. These fees can be prohibitively expensive for small independent filmmakers operating on a shoestring budget, effectively (though to be fair probably not intentionally) preventing niche and alternative viewpoints from reaching the cinemas. Lyne and many other small filmmakers felt that the Board's fees placed an unequal and ultimately unfair burden on anyone not making a film through a major studio.

However, once the fee is paid and the film is submitted, the BBFC must watch every single frame of the submitted film in order ascertain that no material forbidden by British law is allowed into the final cut. Knowing this, Lyne felt the best way to simultaneously protest the fee structure and bring it to the attention of the general public would be to make the most boring movie possible -- a film of the archetypal boring pasttime, watching paint dry -- and force the Board's examiners to sit through every minute of it. He started a Kickstarter campaign with the modest initial goal of £109 (US$159), intended to finance the classification of a symbolic one-minute film. However, he ultimately raised £5,936 (over US$8600), allowing him to submit an extended 607-minute epic to the BBFC.

As an added extra bonus, because BBFC examiners are only permitted to review films for eight hours a day, they were forced to watch Paint Drying for two days.

The BBFC passed the film on January 26, 2016, noting in a typically dry British manner that Paint Drying contained "no material likely to offend or harm", and awarded it a "suitable for all" U certificate.

It has yet to see widespread distribution in either British or American theatres.

See Charlie Lyne's original Kickstarter proposal video laying out his intentions here and see the film's official website here.


 * Color Motif: Most everything in this film is some shade of white.
 * Dada: Although not explicitly intended as Dada, it certainly shares in the movement's absurdist sensibilities.
 * Deliberately Monochrome
 * Epic Film: At least in terms of length, if not in action.  According to Wikipedia, at the time of its release it was one of the twenty longest experimental films of all time.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin
 * Re Cut: The film was originally supposed to be 12 hours and 11 minutes long, but it was cut down to 10 hours and 7 minutes because the director didn't take the value-added tax into account for the cost of a BBFC certificate.
 * Sequel: Well, snarky IT news site The Register thinks there'll be one.
 * Shown Their Work: In the Vice article about the film, Charlie Lyne's complaints against the BBFC are very detailed.
 * Trolling Creator: The film was made expressly for the purpose of wasting the time of the British Board of Film Classification, as a protest against how much it costs a filmmaker to get a movie classified.