Elders of Time is a short documentary that asks a radical question: What would time look like if it were measured by a lifeform that lives for millennia?

Through the work of artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, a couple of clock makers, dendrochronologists, and The Long Now Foundation, the film follows the creation of a new standard of time based on the growth of Bristlecone Pine Trees, some of the oldest living organisms on Earth. In contrast to Coordinated Universal Time, calibrated by atomic clocks for precision and efficiency, Bristlecone Time is variable, relational, and shaped by climate, place, and survival.

Set between the high desert mountains of eastern Nevada and a clock installed at the Nevada Museum of Art, the film traces the scientific, artistic, and philosophical labor behind this intergenerational experiment. Tree cores, land art installations, and a dual clock system reveal how arboreal time drifts out of sync with human schedules, challenging assumptions about control, progress, and permanence.

As climate change accelerates the growth of trees that evolved to live slowly, Elders of Time asks what it means to build systems meant to last thousands of years and whether learning to listen to nature’s elders can reshape how we live now.

Filmmaker and subject expected to attend.