Slow cinema
Slow cinema is a genre of
History
Practitioners of the genre include
Greek director
Recent underground film movements such as Remodernist film share the sensibility of slow or contemplative cinema.
G. Aravindan was a filmmaker whose works such as Kanchana Sita, Thampu and Esthappan have been regarded as embodying a uniquely original style of contemplative cinema where the aesthetic sensibility and philosophical insights of Indian culture could find a meditative mode of expression within more universal contexts of humanism and transcendentalism.[9][5][10]
The AV Festival held a Slow Cinema Weekend at the Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle in March 2012, including the films of Rivers, Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso and Fred Kelemen.[1][7][11][8]
Recent examples include films by
Examples of notable slow works
- A Man Escaped (1956)
- Pickpocket (1959)
- L'Eclisse (1962)
- Red Desert (1964)
- Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
- Mouchette (1967)
- Solaris (1972)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles(1975)
- The Passenger (1975)
- Mirror (1975)
- Stalker (1979)
- Nostalghia (1983)
- The Sacrifice (1986)
- The Lonely Voice of Man (1987)
- It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
- Kárhozat(1988)
- Landscape in the Mist (1988)
- A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
- Sátántangó (1994)[4]
- Taste of Cherry (1997)
- Eternity and a Day (1998)
- Yi Yi (2000)
- In Vanda's Room (2000)
- Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)[14]
- Uzak (2002)
- Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003)[14]
- Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004)
- The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)[15]
- Colossal Youth (2006)[15]
- Still Life (2006)
- Syndromes and a Century (2006)[15]
- Melancholia (2008)
- Wendy and Lucy (2008)[15]
- Police, Adjective (2009)[15]
- Somewhere (2010)[15]
- Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)[15]
- The Turin Horse (2011)
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2011)
- Neighboring Sounds (2012)[15]
- Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
- Norte, the End of History (2013)[15]
- Stray Dogs (2013)
- Corn Island (2014)[16]
- From What Is Before (2014)
- Horse Money (2014)
- Cemetery of Splendour (2015)
- Kaili Blues (2015)
- An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)[14]
- Days (2020)
- Memoria (2021)
- Pacifiction (2022)
- The Zone of Interest (2023)
Sources:[5][1][6][12][13][17][18]
Reception
Criticism
Slow cinema has been criticized as indifferent or even hostile to audiences.[1] A backlash by Sight & Sound's Nick James, and picked up by online writers, argued that early uses of long takes were "adventurous provocations created by extremists", whereas recent films are "operating within a recognized, default artistic idiom."[19] The Guardian's film blog concluded that "being less overweeningly precious about films that are likely to be impenetrable to even the most well-informed audiences would seem an idea."[20] Dan Fox of Frieze criticized both the dichotomy of the argument into "philistine" vs "pretentious" and the reductiveness of the term "slow cinema".[21]
The American director Paul Schrader wrote about slow cinema in his 1972 book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, and called it an aesthetic tool. He argues that most viewers find slow cinema boring,[22] but that a "slow film director keeps his viewer on the hook, thinking there's a reward, a payoff just around the corner."[22]
Recently, film scholars Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour have written that the slow cinema movement's supporters and detractors have both mischaracterized it. As they argue, much "commentary posits slow cinema as a kind of pastoral for the present moment, a respite from our technologically saturated ... Hollywood-blockbuster-centered era." Such commentary therefore associates the movement with pleasure and relaxation. But in reality, slow cinema films often focus on down-and-out laborers; as Fusco and Seymour argue, "for those on the fringes of society, modernity is actually experienced as slowness, and usually to their great detriment."[23]
See also
- Dogme 95
- List of longest films
- Slow food and the Slow movement
- Art film
- Slow cutting
- Slow television
- Structural film
- Extreme cinema
- Still image film
- Non-narrative film
- Experimental film
- Shutter speed
- American Eccentric Cinema
- Minimalist film
- Modernist film
- Postmodernist film
- Working class culture
- Indiewood
References
- ^ a b c d e Sukhdev Sandhu. 'Slow cinema' fights back against Bourne's supremacy. The Guardian, 9 March 2012
- ^ a b Steven Rose. Two Years At Sea: little happens, nothing is explained. The Guardian, 26 April 2012.
- ^ a b Thomas Elsaesser, Stop/Motion in Eivind Rossaak (ed). Between Stillness and Motion: Film, Photography, Algorithms. p117. 2011
- ^ a b Nick James. Syndromes of a new century. Sight & Sound, February 2010
- ^ a b c Srikanth Srinivasan. Flashback #84. The Seventh Art blog, 10 April 2011
- ^ a b David Jenkins. Theo Angelopoulos: the sweep of history Archived 2012-04-23 at the Wayback Machine. Sight & Sound, February 2012
- ^ a b c Miller, Henry K. (March 2012). "Doing time: 'slow cinema' at the AV Festival". Sight & Sound. Archived from the original on 2012-04-04.
- ^ a b Tom Clift. Experimental Expression Archived 2014-04-16 at the Wayback Machine. 'Filmink Magazine', August, 2012.
- ^ Srikanth Srinivasan. "Outtakes: G. Aravindan". The Hindu, 12 October 2013
- ^ Sasikumar Vasudevan. Aravindan – A Scriptless Creative Film Director. Sahapedia, 21 August 2018
- ^ Slow Cinema Weekend. AV Festival, March 2012.
- ^ a b Smith, Nigel M (2017-03-01). "Kelly Reichardt: 'Faster, faster, faster – we all want things faster'". The Guardian.
- ^ ISBN 9780748696048.
- ^ a b c "10 great slow films". BFI. Retrieved 2022-02-19.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i 20 Slow Films From This Century That Reward Patience — Taste of Cinema
- ^ Corn Island, Tarkovsky, & The Legacy of Slow Cinema — Filmatique
- ^ Slow cinema: what it is and why it’s on a fast track to the mainstream in a frenetic world - The Conversation
- ^ "Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still, Tarkovsky's Stalker, The Godfather, and the concept of slow cinema". Firstpost. 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2022-02-19.
- IFC, 12 May 2010.
- ^ Danny Leigh. The view: Is it OK to be a film philistine? The Guardian Film Blog, 21 May 2010
- ^ Dan Fox. Slow, Fast, and Inbetween Archived 2011-09-08 at the Wayback Machine.Frieze blog, 23 May 2010
- ^ ISBN 9780520296817.
- ^ Fusco and Seymour. Kelly Reichardt: Emergency and the Everyday.December 2017