Most people consider a long movie to be anything over two hours. Something over two and a half hours is a very long movie. Cross the three hour threshold and it’s almost impossible to comprehend and if something clocks in around four hours? It almost certainly hurts it chances at financial success. Four hours is basically the longest movie that will play in a conventional theater but, when compared to Modern Times Forever, that’s a drop in a hat.

Modern Times Forever began playing for one time only, projected on the side of the Stora Enso Building in Helsinki, Finland on Wednesday and will continue for 240 hours. That’s right, it’s 10 days long, making it the new title holder of longest movie of all time. What could a ten day movie possibly be about? Find out after the jump.

According to the BBC (with a nod to The Film Stage for finding the article), Modern Times Forever is playing as part of the IHME Project 2011 in Helsinki and was the brainchild of a group called Superflex. Over 10 days, the film will show what thousands of years of decay will do to modern architecture in the future by focusing on the sped up decay of one particular building. You guessed it, the Stora Enso Building on which the film is being projected. Here’s the official plot description:

Apart from being present in our everyday lives, quietly changing for ten days, the film’s time races ahead at an estimated several-hundred-year gallop each day. The film is a fiction about what could happen to the Stora Enso building as an architectural and ideological symbol, over the next few thousands of years, if the days of humankind come to an end, and only time and the weather affect the building.

It seems like something that many History and Discovery Channel shows have covered in a much, much more concise manner but, I guess as an artistic exercise, it is an interesting idea. The film would probably be a lot cooler, though, if they sped it up even faster. If it now shows thousands of years over ten days, why not speed it up and show the same thing over 10 hours or even two hours? Who knows.

Most of the “longest movies ever” are experimental films and Modern Times Forever, the new record holder, continues that tradition. It took the title from Cinématon by Gérard Courant which clocks in at about 156 hours (or six and a half days) and took 33 years to complete.

What do you think about this?