Four-way split...

Filmed using four hand-held digital cameras in single, unedited 93-minute takes, four separate stories unfold simultaneously in real time on a four-way split screen - building to a climax in which they all unexpectedly come together.

Whether this is a laboured gimmick or revolutionary film-making that will transform the cinema industry York filmgoers will be able to decide for themselves tonight.

Time Code - a black comedy thriller set in Los Angeles - is screened at the City Screen from 7pm: and for those mystified by the split-screen goings on, the film-maker himself will put in a personal appearance afterwards to answer questions. There will then be a second screening at 9.30pm.

Figgis, Oscar-winning British director of Leaving Las Vegas, has increasingly turned his back on conventional film-making since the success of that movie in 1995. He seems to genuinely believe that the techniques used in Time Code could represent something like the future of film.

He first had the idea for Time Code while using split-screen for his recent adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie. "I thought the split screen was really cool so I started thinking about the idea of shooting three scenes and then four. Parallel action and synchronicity have always been obsessions of mine."

The use of the split screen may take some getting used to for the audience - not least trying to work out which part to focus on. But it does enable Figgis to get away from the 'linear' narrative common to almost all conventional Hollywood movies.

Real life of course isn't linear. Both sides of a telephone conversation are interesting: the person on whom the camera is focused in a conventional film is affected and influenced by things being done simultaneously by somebody not on screen at all.

Time Code goes further in trying to break the cinematic mould, though, than simply trying to introduce more than one narrative line. The film wasn't really scripted at all: it was improvised. Each day, for day after day, using notes written out on music paper to get the timing right, the actors performed the entire 93 minutes of the film, refining and recreating it afresh.

Four cameramen - Figgis among them - followed the actors, capturing the four separate storylines in single, 93-minute takes. There was no post-production editing: no 'cuts' during filming. Instead, Figgis was eventually faced with the task of choosing the best single take from the shoot. It was a deliberate attempt, he says, to get away from the false reality of the editing suite.

"In some ways editing is a corruption, a lie that feigns continuity," he says. "This film is in part an attempt to show that we can edit in an entirely different way and we can have simultaneous action.

"This allows each individual to have a very different interpretation of what's happening on screen. I don't believe in one interpretation - that's not rich enough for us today."

Whether Time Code actually works as a film you can decide for yourself tonight. And you'll even be able to tell Figgis what you think about it. Revolutionary indeed.

First showing of Time Code is at 7pm, followed by a question and answer session with Mike Figgis and a second screening at 9.30pm. The film then runs until Thursday.