Time Indefinite

Time Indefinite is an autobiographical 1993 documentary film directed by Ross McElwee. It explores themes of grief, mortality, and the convenient disconnection of watching life through a camera lens. The title comes from a passage from the Bible mentioned by a visiting Jehovah's Witness. McElwee is filming the interaction and focused on adjusting the exposure to try to catch the play of light over the man's face; distracted, he "hears" the phrase about 30 seconds after the man says it and understands it to refer to the unpredictable imminence of death. Synopsis In the film, director Ross McElwee gets married, finally putting an end to his family's worrying; his grandmother dies; his wife Marilyn has a miscarriage; and his father, a medical doctor, dies suddenly within a week of McElwee's wife's miscarriage. His mother had died of cancer ten years earlier and so McElwee returns to his father's house, where his father's housekeeper ministers to him about Christianity and faith.