I was recently invited by the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth at the University of Sussex to speak at a symposium on qualitative longitudinal research methods in the study of child development. This interdisciplinary event, which was part of a programme of events funded by the National Centre for Research Methods, brought together anthropologists, literary theorists, sociologists and artists, but the focus of my paper was a discussion of cinema’s capacity to document and represent the passage of time.