This article examines the paradoxes inherent in filmic time, with particular reference to the autobiographical work of the British director Terence Davies. Analysing ways in which film, itself constructed from still images, can create, reverse or freeze temporal flux, confuse and blend multiple and conflicting temporalities, and create the spatial dimensions of an ‘imaginary’ time, it argues that the relationship between film and music may well provide a fundamental key to the understanding of filmic time.