A lot can be conveyed in a short amount of time. Entire stories can be told in under ten minutes. From the cartoons of our childhood to the Youtube videos and Twitter of today, we’ve become used to explored entire worlds in fractions of our leisure time. Mont Blanc, however, held a competition that rapidly reduced that time. Giving new meaning to the short film, contestants in this competition submitted videos only one second long. These videos, however, still tell entire stories.

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The competition was created by Mont Blanc in celebration of the anniversary of the chronograph--a watch with both time-keeping and stopwatch functions, mutch like the multi-faced watches we see today. Its 190 years of existence was cause for a celebration of time for Mont Blanc. The competition encourages people to reflect on and see the wonder in the "fragile beauty of this short-lived unit of time" as their inspiration. While that sounds a little cheesy, some of the entries in this competition are nothing short of beautiful.

While Mont Blanc is still taking submissions, it has already compiled some of their entries. It is amazing how well the story of a scene is conveyed in such a short amount of time. Each contestant can submit up to ten videos for each qualification round. The competition will continue until December 13th, so there’s still plenty of time to create a few one second videos. Those that don’t have an eye for film even one second in length but still want to participate can enter the playlist competition. The playlist competition seeks compilations of the videos already submitted, arranged in creative and inspiring ways. That competition continues until January 10th, 2012.

Below is a video of some of the submissions so far and an indtroduction to the competition by Wim Wenders. To learn more, see the One Second Film site.