Six Day Run

The Self-Transcendence 6-Day race. Six days of running, six days around a one-mile course in a park in New York. Six days of running and becoming, six days of rain and sun and night and day, six days of round and around and round and around.

Dervishes in jogging bottoms, a meditational marathon, a three-time winner, Ashprihanal Alto. Sri Chimoy leads, in spirit rather than flesh, a quote from him opens, it is his notion that leads to the six-day race. Six days. One-hundred-and-forty-four hours, 8,640 minutes, one foot in front of another.

There are sequences of colour and super-position, a bearded figure in the woods, some urban canid in the tree-line, and always the bounce of running, one step at a time, Alto's implacable circular progress. Tables are covered with energy drinks, photographs of inspirational Sri, the lights on the freeway float by, the runners run on. There's an obvious contrast with ultramarathon documentary Desert Runners, but beyond the opening quote there's no examination of motivation here. This is about the act, not intent or outcome. The music by Circle is a key component, driving and looping as Alto runs on. They count the laps like they're at Le Mans, it's not about time but distance within that time, it's not about place but finding oneself within it, it's not about anything but running but it suggests there might be everything there.

It's unflinching, indeed, it could come with a gore warning because the flesh is not happily transcended and this kind of ordeal is closer to mortifaction than exercise. The runners sleep in tents, run loops, change clothes, run loops, run loops, run loops, a shuffling mass of mendicants all getting one step closer to the something of nothingness. No explanation though - no precis of motiviation - merely the act of running. "Merely" when we're discussing hundreds of miles, legs pounding from dawn to dusk and back again, all running and becoming. Mika Taanila's film is fascinating, creating in its absences a compelling mystery - it could ask why, but why ask why? Run to see it.