How to see early silent films (68mm Biograph)

The IMAX of the 1890s | How to see the first movies (2019/Dave Kehr/MoMA) 11'

Related :

• Louis Lumière (Rohmer/Renoir/Langlois)
• Les films Louis et Auguste Lumière 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12 (YouTube)

Flânerie 2.0 (Chloé Galibert-Laîné)

Flânerie 2.0 [ENG SUBS] from Chloé Galibert-Laîné on Vimeo. (11'13") 11 march 2018

Walter Benjamin (1938) La contemplation et la perception distraite


Related :

• Propos sur la flânerie
• Flânerie urbaines sans parole (EIKAWA Yuki) 
• Flânerie and (Post)Modernity: Links in memory of Anne Friedberg at Film Studies For Free
• “The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project” (Susan Buck-Morss, 1989)
• “Passagenwerk” / Arcades Project (Walter Benjamin)

Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still)

The elephant in the room

A man wakes up and murmurs to his lover : « They say there is an elephant in Manhzouli, it sits there all day long and ignores the world. Or maybe it just enjoys sitting there. » The quirky reputation of this elusive pachyderm becomes a symbol of liberation, escapism and flat out defiance for a handful of protagonists living, or surviving, in an indistinct smoggy city of North-East China.

The reason the still elephant fascinates the characters of this film might be because he’s so mysteriously impervious to the world of pain around him. Maybe they all crave to reach this stoic state of mind, to face the overbearing troubles in their lives, like the Elephant-Buddha.

But this enigmatic eponymous animal could be none other than the spectators themselves… sitting still in front of the silver screen while the world rushes around them at an accelerated pace. Contemplative Cinema aficionados are the last survivors of a post-electronic age. And this film is the cemetery for all these brave elephants.

We are simultaneously reminded of the parable of the Blind Men feeling an elephant by its constituting parts without managing to make sense of the whole picture. One feels the trunk and believes it’s a snake. One feels the side and believe it’s a wall… The film is somehow built in this manner, with four alienated parties missing an outsider’s perspective to fully understand their situation and be understood. Four interlacing pathways.

Director’s Statement

“He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.” (All the Pretty Horses ; Cormac McCarthy ; 1992)

« This quote from Cormac McCarthy is also the subject of this film. In our age, it’s increasingly hard for us to have faith even in the tiniest of things, and the frustration from which becomes the hallmark of today’s society. The film builds up personal myths in between daily routines. In the end, everyone loses what he or she values the most. »
(HU Bo ; 2017)

Cryptic synopsis

Four portraits of solitudes and humiliations. WEI Bu, high-school student, will get involved in an accident with the school bully in order to defend his best friend. YU Cheng, the bully’s older brother and gangster himself, will push his best friend to extreme lengths because he slept with his wife. WANG Jin, 60-year-old, is begged to move to a nursing home by his son. HUANG Ling, Bu’s crush, fears the consequences of an Internet scandal. The four of them are victims, alienated by their family and friends. Crossing path at some point with one another, always on the move, they all pursue this inscrutable elephant sitting still in Manchuria.

Interlacing pathways

The near-4h long film runs the course of a diegetic day, from dawn tilll dawn. 24 hours of a tragic turn of events, that will collide four persons’ individual lives of three generations and a bunch of side characters, family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. Maybe the worst day of their lives. Each protagonist is introduced in the morning separately, in their bed, at home within their family. One after the other, they go about their day, arguing with their loved ones for no reason until a tragedy shatters their preconceptions and alter their life for the worst. Four tragedies involving death or scandal for the least. HU Bo cross-cuts between stories alternatively, never before the 5 min mark. And the segments grow longer as the pathways begin to interlace and interact. Until three out of four protagonists join and take a trip together (but each alone).

The focus zone. Who is left out of focus?

HU Bo carefully composes his frames, always with a powerful foreground. A figure in close-up who consumes the screen almost entirely. The shallow focus sends everything to the background in a blur. And HU Bo doesn’t track focus on the talking person. His rule is to keep the massive close-up figure in sharp focus even when they are only listening or idling. Our eyes sweep the screen for moving details or secondary characters, in vain. Sometimes the face in the foreground close up is in the blur and the main character is in the middle ground. Only when two or three main characters share the same shot do they benefit from a deep focus.

The fixated focus plan reminds us that the point of view of the four main characters only prevails. They are the only persons we should look at (the others are relegated to the corner of our eyes).They are the ones who have a voice in HU Bo’s film. Their environment and the surrounding people are eternally out of focus, as if at a distance, an insurmountable no man’s land that separates the I from Them. The others. These people who fail to understand us, who blame us for everything, who judge our motivation, who invariably miscommunicate, who refuse to listen. HU Bo keeps this dispositif (device) even for a « nape shot ».

Nape camera

Popularised by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne in Rosetta (1999), the « nape shot » or tracking shot from behind, following the footsteps of a characters with always his/her back to the camera, is abundantly utilised by HU Bo in this road movie on foot. Much like Rosetta, where a single protagonist was followed around in her grim daily routine, An Elephant Sitting Still follows around four protagonists alternatively, mostly in nape shots, seldom in frontal shots. The nape shot in shallow focus, puts all the environment in front of the protagonists and the people they meet in a blurry background. The protagonists in medium close up, back to the camera, occupy half of the screen, in sharp focus. We are denied reading the feelings of the protagonists directly in their eyes and on their face. It is frustrating at first but engaging us to project our thoughts. Béla Tarr is also fond of the nape shot, especially in Satantango (1994).

Influences

The Dardenne brothers might be an influence on HU Bo, possibly, but what is certain is that Tarr was his mentor at a workshop of the Xining FIRST festival in 2016 when he developed his script under the supervision of the CCC (Contemporary Contemplative Cinema) master. There is more BélaTarr in An Elephant Sitting Still than there are influences from Chinese masters, because of the darker lighting, the greyscale palette (even though it’s not in black and white), the gloomy society, the depressed characters, the illusion of hope and the disappointment. This said, Chinese CCC masters such as Wang Bing (Three Sisters, 2012) or Jia Zhangke (Unknown Pleasures, 2003) from the Sixth Generation, have blazed the trail for the coming of the 8th Generation.

8th generation

Bi Gan made his debut at 25 year old (Kaili Blues; 2015), and HU Bo at 29 year-old (An Elephant Sitting Still; 2018).Together they represent the brand new Eighth generation of Chinese cinema, according to Pierre Rissient, cinéphile par excellence (who passed away last year). HU Bo passed away in October 2017 after the post-production of his film. Thanks to the achievements of their CCC predecessors, thanks to the support of film festivals, HU Bo and BI Gan have begun their career on a high note. HU Bo with a 4h long debut film. BI Gan with two films ending in a near 50min long take.

 

Ellipses

Visual ellipses are in the frame (shallow focus, nape shot) as well as off screen. The true violence is kept at bay, behind the frame boundaries. When the dog is killed, the camera pans on an onlooker. When someone commits suicide, the camera lets the victim rush off screen or shifts to the side, leaving on screen the face of a witness.

Violence plays out off screen, perhaps because gory action is the most difficult to produce on set without a budget, CGI or stunts. There is a scene where one character rushes in a kitchen on fire to save the burnt cook, and the camera sees the protagonist enter the kitchen, disappear behind a blank wall, in front of which the camera tracks laterally to reveal the result through a window at the other end of the wall. A kind of lateral travelling shot reminiscent of Béla Tarr & Agnès Hranitzky’s Satantango or Damnation (2005).

A temporal ellipsis is also present. One single plan séquence is shot simultaneously from two different points of view and played back to back. One from the point of view of Bu with Cheng, in the street outside a restaurant. And the other is from the point of view of Ling with the school principal, inside the restaurant. Two perspectives of the lunch of an adultery couple. Ling exits the restaurant to chase Bu at the end of the first take, and enters the restaurant at the beginning of the second take, which could be mistaken for a continuity shot… Only after a while do we realise the film just jumped back in time, to rewind a few minutes and offer a new perspective on the same scene.

Darker lighting

Spectators who come out of this marathon screening might recall erroneously a black and white film. However the film is truly in colours, albeit faint colours and grey scales, just like the smoggy city hosting these characters. The whole film is bathed in under lit spaces, without fill in lighting. This creates a sense of doom and gloom prospect in all the shots. The actors aren’t stars, figuratively as well as metaphorically. Unlike a Hollywood star there is no bright light shining on them everywhere they go. The star of the picture is the environment, with a crude light, dim, obscure.

Contemplative mode

HU Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still shares the same narrative mode of Contemporary Contemplative Cinema and each aspect resembles a CCC master.

Plotlessness. No plot, except for the visceral reaction of four people against a sudden tragedy, and their meandering trajectory ejected from a comfort zone orbit. His drastic script resembles Darejan Omirbaev.

Slowness. Long takes (plan séquence) and sedentary camera recording the mundane routines in their entirety. The visual style of the camerawork resembles Béla Tarr.

Alienation. There is a general sense of ennui, a feeling of solitude, a world of confusion. Each in their own peculiar way, the characters are left alone in the world, alienated from their family and friends. The darkness and hopelessness resembles Lav Diaz.

Wordlessness. Not necessarily silent nor speechy, the dialogues are merely natural conversations, laconic arguments. Actions are more powerful than words. Actions of the body in its context and the repercussions of its deployment. As few a word as Jia Zhangke.

The CCC trademarks underline HU Bo’s mise en scène, creating a recognizable genre of a placid crime story with the bullies and the victims. Nonetheless, he developed his idiosyncratic style, like no other CCC master before him, with his focus delimitation and his absence of counter shots.

Portrait of a city. Portrait of a world.

Manhzouli, border-city between Manchuria and Russia, where this funny circus has settled, is a goal-post destination, an Eldorado, an obsession for the four protagonists. Yet the Eldorado in China away from China is the obsession of the new independent Chinese cinema. And all the routes, of lonely individuals, lead to Manhzouli, eventually. Manhzouli is the ideal city, away from home, near the border in order to escape the Chinese empire.

Cheng : « The World is a wasteland. »

On the other hand the city they live in, nondescript city of the North-East, represents the harsh reality of Chinese way of life, away from the stereotypes of crazy rich capitalists in the capitals and the idealised countryside of pastoral fables. This concrete city is closer to the realist China of Wang Bing. Bu, Ling, and their friends attend the worst high-school in town, which is bound to shut down. Grey, dirty, rusty, smelly, dangerous, foggy paint for a world à la Dickens or Zola, egoistic, oppressive, unjust. We are recalling JiaZhangke’s Unknown Pleasures (2002) or The World (2004).

Duration

It has become commonplace in Slow Cinema defense to say of a film over topping the mainstream average (90-120min) that it feels shorter or not as long. It is the case here. 230 min is physically twice longer than what a standard audience would tolerate, in spite of being less exhausting. Yet the slow pace feels in constant activity, even through the pedestrian journeys from point A to point B. The stories flow continuously without a laborious accumulation of useless information. Events are inflated to resemble real life span.

When you get the chance to spend 3h50 minutes with four characters, they become friends, they become real persons we know inside out. There is a new emotional regimen at work in the identification to the protagonists after a patient attention. Instead of the content of psychological dialogues, it’s the sympathetic time spend together that forges an enduring rapport with the taciturn heroes.

4 hours (or close to that) is an ambitious stretch of time for a debut film. Even the specialist like Lav Diaz (he’s made films lasting over 12h) started his career with a « normal » feature length. HU Bo did have an open conflict with his producers to keep the final cut on a full version, which he always had in mind before shooting.

Small times

The long take is the director’s stylistic choice, which tends to comply with the CCC canon. But detractors (or confused critics) often point out to the lack of obvious motivation for this choice. A futile editing job that eschews any decision to cut. « They don’t know when to cut ! », they say.

Sometimes the cut comes in a little later than the effective cut on action. Sometimes the cut drags a little bit after the action ends to let the spectator contemplate what has just been seen, and what will come next. The Hollywood edit doesn’t let you think about images that are successively bombarded into your passive retina.

HU Bo draws attention to the dead times, after and around actions. People’s displacements become, in full, integer part of the film. They inhabit their world measuring it at length by foot. Without a clear map of this unknown city, we nonetheless figure out exactly how far they live from one another, and how small is their society.

Bu is filmed intently in the hall at the bottom of his project building staircase. What is he doing ? He rubs the end of a matchstick against the derelict cement of the wall, where he spat on his saliva, to form a ball that will stick to the ceiling after he’s lit it on fire and thrown it in the air. The camera pans up and reveals a ceiling clustered with splashes of soot around the burnt matchsticks sticking down.

Contrechamp interdit (Forbidden counter shot)

No establishing shot, no cutaway, no deep focus, no shot-counter shot. HU Bo films uniquely with plan séquences sans counter shot. Thusly limiting the spectator’s perspective to the protagonist viewpoint in each shot, where the hero of the sequence is in a foreground close up (as seen previously). André Bazin, in his most famous piece « Montage interdit » (in « Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ? », 1958), declared the forbidden edit in certain cases where the action requires to show two characters / events in the same frame at the same time, to prove the simultaneity of actions. For example to show the predator and the prey in the same shot.

Paraphrasing Bazin, we could evoke a forbidden counter shot here, similarly related to the forbidden edit for ethical reasons. Here the shot (a plan séquence) has only one side to it, one version of truth, one bias, one point of view.

Follow up : Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still) Second part

A Press Review (An Elephant Sitting Still) Third part

Read also :

• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/HU Bo/China) a few links and a trailer

The Scientific Benefits of Boredom

The scientific benefits of Boredom (Veritassium) 29 september 2018



Related :

• How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas | Manoush Zomorodi
• (Ap)prendre le temps ? Il faut savourer l'ennui (France Culture)
• On Being Bored (Phillips) 
• 'Boring' is not a critical argument 
• Boredom (Charney)
• “La Peur de l'Ennui” (anonymous Cahiers reader)

Slow Cinema video essay & Kaili Blues

What Is Duration? Understanding Slow Cinema Through KAILI BLUES

A video bricolage-essay by Ryan Swen (YouTube 29 May 2018) 9'15"

A mix between a straightforward video essay and a more abstract collage, this video briefly delves into the loose movement known as slow cinema, using the 2015 Chinese film KAILI BLUES, directed by Bi Gan, as a focusing lens. Equal emphasis is given to analysis and creation of a mood befitting the subject matter.

Source :

• "Slow cinema" (ToBeContd) Zachary Lewis, Michael Sicinski (2014) [offline:accessible on Web Archive]
• "Slow Wars" (n+1) Moira Weigel (spring 2016)
• n+1 podcast 29 : "Slow Wars" with Moira Weigel (10 September 2016) 33'

'Kaili Blues' Q&A | Bi Gan | New Directors/New Films 2016 (YouTube 33')

Director Bi Gan discussed his film 'Kaili Blues' after its screening at New Directors/New Films 2016, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. A multiple prizewinner at the Locarno Film Festival and one of the most audacious and innovative debuts of recent years, Bi Gan’s endlessly surprising shape-shifter comes to assume the uncanny quality of a waking dream as it poetically and mysteriously interweaves the past, present, and future. Chen Sheng, a country doctor in the Guizhou province who has served time in prison, is concerned for the well-being of his nephew, Weiwei, whom he believes his thug brother Crazy Face intends to sell. Weiwei soon vanishes, and Chen sets out to find him, embarking on a mystical quest that takes him to the riverside city of Kaili and the town of Dang Mai. Through a remarkable arsenal of stylistic techniques, the film develops into a one-of-a-kind road movie, at once magical and materialist, traversing both space and time. A Grasshopper Film release.

Rethinking Transcendental Style in Film | Paul Schrader

Fuller Studio : 26 April 2018

Paul Schrader : "Tarkovsky's films mark a deviding point in the history of Durational Cinema. Before Tarkovsky, the use of withholding and distancing devices which Deleuze calls "Time Image", took place in the context of commercial theatrical cinema. Transcendental Style falls into this category.
After Tarkovsky the use of these devices became increasingly exagerated, and their films fell into the domain of film festivals and art museums. The 3 sec Bresson's shot of a door became a 10 min static view of traffic. Transcendental Style had morphed into the hydra-headed monster we call "Slow Cinema". Without going into length, I'd just say that Slow Cinema refers to films of considerable length where very little happens. [...] This is why I say it's outside the perview of commercial cinema. Cinema in my opinion is inherantly narrative."

Paul Schrader : "To me when movies move away from their narrative nucleus, they vector in one of three directions. And all three are dead endpoints. One is the Surveillance Camera, another is the Art Gallery and the third is the Mandala."

N.B. Thanks to Nadin Mai for posting Schrader's chart on Twitter.

Check out my Durational Cinema Map (from Schrader's)

Related :

• Bad TS = Good CCC (Schrader)
• Oversparse
• Updated Genealogy Chart

Scholarly Contemplative Cinema

Here are some books, magazines or PhD thesis on slow cinema/contemplative cinema available online (latest addition to the Bibliography page):

• “Nocturnal Fabulations: Ecology, Vitality and Opacity in the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul” (Érik Bordeleau, Toni Pape, Ronald Rose-Antoinette, Adam Szymanski; 2017)
• “Cierta tendencia (nostálgica) del slow cinema” (Horacio Muñoz Fernández; 2017)
• “Speeding Slowness: Neo-Modern Contemplative and Sublime Cinema Aesthetics in Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy” (Boczkowska Kornelia; 2016)
• “Mexican Minimalist Cinema:Articulating the (Trans)national” (Bolesław Racięski, 2016)
• “Het dwaallicht vertaald naar Slow Cinema -De wandelaar in hedendaagse langspeelfilm”  (Anne Verbeure; 2015) on Lav Diaz, Albert Serra, Jia Zhangke, Lisandro Alonso
• “As Slow as Possible: An Enquiry Into the Redeeming Power of Boredom for Slow Film Viewers” (Jakob Boer; 22 January 2015)
• “Leave to live? Placeless people in contemporary Hungarian and Romanian films of return” (Hajnal Király; July 2015) 
• “Screening Boredom : The history and aesthetic of slow cinema” (Orhan Emre Çağlayan; Feb 2014)
• “The aesthetics of absence and duration in the post-trauma cinema of Lav Diaz” (Nadin Mai; 2014)
• “Neoformalistická analýza filmu Now Showing / Neoformalist Analysis of the film Now Showing” (Hubert Poul; 2014)
• “'Slow Cinema': Temporality and Style in Contemporary Art and Experimental Film” (Matthew Flanagan; Oct 2012)

Feel free to add more if you found others

Teaching Jeanne Dielman (The Cine-Files)

"I’ve taught Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975), nearly every year for twenty-five years. (...) Its sounds are sparing and punctual; you can also hear your neighbor’s fidgeting. It thus challenges what a movie is to look at and listen to, what cinema is as a way of bestowing attention. Like other time-based arts, Jeanne Dielman depends on rhythm; for a long time after watching it, I feel as if I am moving to a metronome. (...) Student responses have led me to realize that the patient, forgiving gaze that the film solicits is as filial as it is feminist. (...) Jeanne Dielman can make a formalist out of anyone, and it is a great lesson for would-be filmmakers about how setting limits can inspire one’s best work. (...) Jeanne Dielman has 223 shots averaging close to one minute each. (...) There are two pieces I assign whatever the course: Janet Bergstrom’s influential essay on Jeanne Dielman, written “for the Camera Obscura collective” and published in 1977 in the journal’s second issue alongside excerpts from an interview with the director, identifies the film’s unique “logic of viewer/viewed,” director and character, feminist and feminine, in urgent and elegant prose. (...)De Lauretis writes: “What the film constructs—formally and artfully, to be sure—is a picture of female experience, of duration, perception, events, relationships and silences, which feels immediately and unquestionably true.” (...)Over 25 years there are of course always new things to take into account when I teach Jeanne Dielman. Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Kelly Reichardt, and Gus Van Sant pay homage to Akerman in their work. (...)Students have told me over the years that the film was one of the most meaningful that they encountered in their film education—an unforgettable, sense-memory implanting experience. Jeanne Dielman is about routine and rupture, deep love and risk-taking—so is teaching."

Patricia White

full text at The Cine-Files (Dossier of Film Teaching)

Fireflies

Fireflies is a print magazine, a beautifully crafted book, published between Berlin and Melbourne by founders Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini Camia:

(...) Each issue assembles an international group of writers and visual artists to celebrate the work of two extraordinary filmmakers through personal essays, interviews and creative responses. (...)
We print responses to cinema that are personal, daring and that wouldn’t necessarily be found in other film journals­: short fiction, visual art, poetry, memoir, comics, and creative non-fiction that experiments with multiple forms. (...)

What is interesting to Unspoken Cinema is the filmmakers they chose, always by pair, are familiar with the list of CCC filmmakers :

• Issue #1 : Pasolini / Apichatpong Weerasethakul (out of print)
• Issue #2 : Kiarostami / Tarr (out of print)
• Issue #3 : Claire Denis / Jia Zhangke
• Issue #4 : Pedro Costa / Ben Rivers
• Issue #5 : Angela Schanelec / Agnès Varda

Pour un cinéma contemporain soustractif (Antony Fiant)

Pour un cinéma contemporain soustractif
Antony Fiant (Juin 2014) extrait PDF / Site de l'éditeur

Résumé :

Depuis le début du XXIe siècle, on observe l'apparition régulière de films minimalistes manifestant une réticence marquée envers le scénario, le récit, la parole, la musique et la psychologie. Qu'ils relèvent de la fiction, du documentaire, ou des deux à la fois, les films de quinze cinéastes du monde entier (Lisandro Alonso, Wang Bing, Alain Cavalier, Pedro Costa, Darejan Omirbaev, Béla Tarr, entre autres) sont ici analysés d'un point de vue esthétique et dramaturgique pour mieux mettre en évidence un geste soustractif.
Moins d'histoire, moins de dialogues, moins de décors, ces caractéristiques manifestent une belle foi en l'art du cinéma et en sa capacité de suggestion.

Cet ouvrage veut réaffirmer les spécificités d’un art de la mise en scène, de l’espace et du temps.
Force est de constater la présence dans le cinéma le plus contemporain (ici envisagé entre 2000 et 2013) de nombreux cinéastes rechignant à se glisser dans des modèles esthétiques et dramaturgiques bien rodés, en faisant en quelque sorte vœu d’abstinence (tant esthétique que dramaturgique). En plébiscitant le cinéma contemporain soustractif, ce livre voudrait – à un moment où la singularité du cinéma semble bien menacée par le tout-venant numérique – réaffirmer les spécificités d’un art de la mise en scène, de l’espace et du temps.

Sommaire : 

1. Remise en cause du récit 

• Questions de récit   
• Retour sur le scénario    
• À la limite du maniérisme  

 
2. Personnages reclus du monde

• L’autarcie au risque de la marginalisation    
• L’espace comme refuge    
• Présence des corps  

 
3. Esthétiques « pauvres »  

• Repli esthétique, esthétiques du chaos    
• Cadre géométrique    
• Cadre physique     

4. L’autoportrait, expiation ou exutoire ?    

• Fragments d’intimités    
• Présence/absence des corps et des voix    
• Des « lieux, dépositaires d’images-souvenirs »    

5. Dramaturgies régénérées 

• La fable sinon rien    
• Parole contre mutisme    
• Travail des genres

    
6. Questions d’adaptation et de réflexivité

• Recours à la littérature   
• Recours au cinéma  

  
7. Un cinéma de la cruauté  

• Des mondes originaires    
• Pulsions élémentaires    
• Chemins de croix 

   
8. Suggérer le passé : l’histoire tout de même   

• Histoires de camps    
• Colonisation, décolonisation    
• La chute du communisme   

9. Observer les mutations du monde

• Poésie politique   
• Vers un primitivisme anthropologique

l'auteur : 

Antony Fiant, professeur en études cinématographiques à l'université Rennes 2, écrit dans plusieurs revues de cinéma, notamment Trafic et Images documentaires. Il est l'auteur de deux essais monographiques : (Et) Le cinéma d'Otar losseliani (fut) (2002, l'Âge d'Homme) et Le cinéma de Jia Zhang-ke. No future (made) in China (2009, Presses Universitaires de Rennes).

Filmer l'invisible (documentaire macroscopique animalier)

Microcosmos : filmer l'invisible, macrocinématographie de la nature

Conférence de Claude Nuridsany et Marie Pérennou 

29 mars 2013 (La cinémathèque française) 1h52'

Films cités :

• Microcosmos 1996
• Génésis 2004
• La clé des champs 2011

Lire aussi :

• Stasis films 2 (landscape) 
• Losing the ability to contemplate Nature for itself
• L'eau dormante (Bachelard)
• Temps et récit (Ricœur)
• Quattro Volte (critique contemplative) 1
• 10 min of Life at the time

Le temps philosophique (Etienne Klein)

Raphaël Enthoven s'aventure à la lisière de l'existence, avec le physicien Étienne Klein. L'origine renvoie au fondement, à la cause, à la source, au berceau, à la création ou encore à la naissance. Mais c'est aussi un paradoxe absolu puisqu'elle prétend se situer dans un temps qui précède le temps lui-même. Raphaël Enthoven explore l'origine du monde en compagnie de son invité, le physicien Étienne Klein. (France, 2011, 26mn) ARTE France

Bibliographie :

• “L'intuition de l'instant” (Gaston Bachelard, 1931) 
• “La Pensée et le mouvant” (Henri Bergson, 1934) [PDF]
• Maurice Blanchot, L'attente, l'oubli (1962)
• “Du temps. Eléments d'une philosophie du vivre” (Etienne Klein, 2001)

Voir aussi : 

• Le temps philosophique (France Culture)
• La fabrique du temps / Représentation du temps
• Temps respecté (Martin) / Temps et récit (Ricœur)
• La question du mal-être (Stiegler)
• Le presque-rien (Jankelevitch)
• Plan séquence philosophique (Enthoven)

Pierre Perrault (Sabouraud)

Qui êtes-vous Pierre Perrault ? Conférence de Frédéric Sabouraud

12 novembre 2012 (La cinémathèque française) 1h16'

Arte Povera (Celant/Pistoletto)

Parole à l'histoire de l'art
21 novembre 2012 (centrepompidou) 1h11'

Parole à l'histoire de l'art , Germano Celant et Michelangelo Pistoletto (Centre Pompidou; Paris; France)

En compagnie de ces protagonistes majeurs de l’Arte Povera, rencontre autour de la naissance et de la configuration de la scène artistique italienne des années 60 qui a marqué durablement l’histoire de l’art. A l’occasion de la présentation à la Maison rouge de la collection du couple italien Giuliana et Tommaso Setari dans le cadre du cycle dédié aux collections privées, du 20 octobre 2012 au 13 janvier 2013.

Oeuvres de Michelangelo Pistoletto dans l'Arte Povera :

• Venus of Rags, 1967
• Arte Povera + Azioni Povere, 1968
• Orchestra of Rags, 1968
• Small Monument, 1968
• Soap and Water Sled, 1968
• Columns of Rags, 1968

Voir aussi :

• Minimalisme, Postmodernité et Arte Povera
• arte povera

Rien (France Culture)

Rien (Adèle Van Reeth; Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance; France Culture; 26-29 Nov 2012)


1. Pourquoi y-a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien ? (26 Nov 2012) 58' [MP3]

avec: Francis Wolff, professeur de philosophie à l'ENS-Ulm

A quoi tu penses ? A rien. C’est donc que tu penses à quelque chose, sinon tu me répondrais, simplement : je ne suis pas en train de penser, ce qui est impossible. Le rien, ce sont les vagues de l’esprit qui, certes, pense, mais sans savoir à quoi il pense. Tout comme l’absence est le signe d’une présence qui manque, le rien est un mot qui désigne une chose qui s’ignore : un rien me fait chanter, un rien me fait danser, et quand je ris pour rien, je ris sans raison, et c’est déjà beaucoup.
Si le rien n’est rien, et si la pensée est toujours pensée de quelque chose, alors le rien est impensable, inimaginable même.
Penser le rien, c’est une manière pour la raison de se confronter au plus gros défi qui soit, et ce sera l’enjeu de cette semaine.
Demain, Bruno Clément viendra nous parler de la mise en scène du rien dans l’écriture de Samuel Beckett, mercredi, Céline Denat nous expliquera le nihilisme nietzschéen et c’est Simone Mazauric, qui vous relatera jeudi les épisodes scientifiques et conceptuels passionnants de la querelle du vide.
Mais pour l’heure, préparez-vous à affronter la question métaphysique par excellence, celle qui fait pâlir la raison et trembler les concepts : pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien.

2. Beckett, faire du rien un théâtre (27 Nov 2012) 58' [MP3]

avec: Bruno Clément

Le 23 octobre 1969, L’académie suédoise décerne le prix Nobel de littérature à Samuel Beckett, auteur de l’innommable et de Fin de partie : pour certains, resté anonyme, il s’est contenté de mettre le rien en mots, de bâtir une œuvre qui se répète sans fin. Pour d’autre, comme Maurice Blanchot, Beckett n’eut ni à accepter ni à refuser un prix qui ne couronnait spécialement aucune œuvre, car il n’y a pas d’œuvre chez Beckett.
L’œuvre de Beckett est une ruine du discours, et qui pourtant sait faire rire, et s’il agace, c’est parce qu’il est honnête : tout est là, devant nous, tout le temps, et ce tout est un si petit rien qu’une vie d’écriture ne suffirait à le dire.

3. Les deux nihilismes de Friedrich Nietzsche (28 Nov 2012) 58' [MP3]

avec: Céline Denat (philosophe, maître de conférence à l'Université de Reims et membre du groupe Groupe international de Recherches sur Nietzsche sous la direction de Patrick Wotling)

C'est aujourd'hui le troisième temps de notre semaine consacrée à penser le rien, et c'est en compagnie de la philosophe Céline Denat que nous allons osculter, un marteau dans une main, une fiole médicinale dans l'autre, ce mal de vivre que l'on nomme nihilisme et que Nietzsche perçoit comme le symptôme d'une modernité européenne rongé par le "sentiment creusant du rien".

4. La Nature a-t-elle horreur du vide? (29 Nov 2012) 58' [MP3]
avec: Simone Mazauric

Même le rien a une fin : après Pourquoi y’a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien, Beckett qui écrit pour mettre le rien en mots et le nihilisme de Nietzsche, c’est aujourd’hui le dernier jour de notre semaine consacrée au rien, et c’est la philosophe Simone Mazauric qui vient pour l’occasion vient vous relater les enjeux de la querelle du vide qui révolutionna entre 1645 et 1648, les conceptions métaphysiques et scientifiques des savants du 17ème siècle.

* * *

Ensō (円相) est un mot japonais signifiant "cercle" et un concept specialement associé avec le Zen.
Ensō est un des sujets les plus répandus de la calligraphie japonaise même si c'est un symbole et non une lettre calligraphique. Il symbolise illumination absolue, force, élégance, l'univers, et le vide; il peut aussi symboliser l'esthétique japonaise elle-même. En tant qu' "expression de l'instant" il est souvent considéré une forme de l'art expressioniste minimaliste. (Wikipedia)

Voir aussi : 

• Conférence sur rien (John Cage)
• Le vide (Virilio) / Vers une esthétique du vide au cinéma (José Moure, 1997) / L'appel du vide
• Æther (Christoph Keller)
• Le Presque-rien (Jankélévich) / Figures de l'absence (Vernet) / Substance, absence (Balasubramaniam)
• MU

Left Field Cinema Podcast (Mike Dawson)

Left Field Cinema was first released in November 2007, written and presented by Mike Dawson. The show has two main purposes; the first is to examine cinema in relative terms, tackling main stream cinema from alternative perspectives, applying varying theories to popular films and hopefully discussing them with a fresh point of view. The second purpose is to unearth more obscure films from world cinema and the independent scene, films that perhaps you've never heard of but are worthy of your attention.

Left Field Cinema Podcast (Mike Dawson)

Selected episodes relating to CCC films :

World Cinema Masterpiece: Werckmeister Harmonies [MP3] 26'52"
An extended examination of Bela Tarr's modern masterpiece about the boundaries between civility and barbarism. Also featuring a look back at the first eight feature films of Tarr's career.
Contemporary Obscurity: Satantango [MP3] (missing MP3, read the written review instead)
Bela Tarr's seven and a half hour feature film. A beautiful, difficult, infuriating, disturbing exploration of the death of communism through the microcosm of a small Hungarian village.

World Cinema Masterpiece: Tropical Malady [MP3] 13'08"
Tropical Malady (Sud pralad) represents Apichatpong Weerasethakul's third feature film as director and confirms him as an outstanding directorial talent on the world stage and one of the finest contemporary filmmakers. This episode also features a look back at the career of Weerasethakul.

Asian Avant-Garde: Eureka [MP3] 16'57"
Shinji Aoyama's visually stunning three and a half hour meditation on the nature of trauma. One the finest Japanese films of the decade.

* * *

Selected episodes relating to broader contemplative films :

Analysis: The Films of Hirokazu Koreeda [MP3] 17'34"
Hirokazu Koreeda is the unsung great director of Japanese cinema. Koreeda is his nation's equivalent of Michael Winterbottom, a chameleonic filmmaker who has never told the same story twice and is a master of all styles. Paradoxically though his seven films to date all explore a re-occurring theme of death.
Asian Avant-Garde: Nobody Knows [MP3] 17'31"
Continuing Left Field Cinema's exploration of the work of the great Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda, this episode explores one of his best films to date, a tragic drama centered around the abandonment of four children to fend for themselves in modern Japan.

Analysis: The Films of Anh Hung Tran - Part One / Two [MP3] 20'02" + 19'51"
Anh Hung Tran is one the greatest directors working today, in this episode of Left Field Cinema we examine his first three films also known as "The Vietnam Trilogy". Starting with his debut The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), his work improved with the violent crime thriller Cyclo (1995) and he became a master of the medium with At the Height of Summer (2000).
Anh Hung Tran is one the greatest directors working today, in this episode of Left Field Cinema we examine his two latest films which move away from Tran's native Vietnam. Starting with cacophonic masterpiece I Come with the Rain (2008) then moving onto his adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (2010).

Asian Avant-Garde: Dolls  [MP3] 11'14"
Takeshi Kitano's 2002 meditation on unconditional devotion - boasting a multi-stranded narrative, slow pace, and the absence of Kitano as performer. This is one of Kitano's finest films and a clear member of the Japanese Avant Garde.

* * *

Selected episodes relating to CC precursors :

Theodoros Angelopoulos: The Beekeeper [MP3] 14'33"
In 1986 Angelopoulos moved away from the cinematic symphonies he is well known for and attempted a chamber piece. The resulting film was one of his most flawed if intriguing productions - The Beekeeper (O melissokomos).
Theodoros Angelopoulos: The Travelling Players [MP3] 13'37"
The last of my five favourite directors, starting this series with his four hour in length 1975 Brechtian masterpiece The Travelling Players.

Andrei Tarkovsky: Andrei Rublev [MP3] 13'50"
Continuing the exploration of the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, this episode examines his second feature film as director, the frustrating but impressive historical epic about Russia's greatest iconographer.
Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker [MP3] 16'23"
1979 Andrei Tarkovsky released his fifth feature film as director, Stalker (Сталкер). The production is often thought to be responsible for the great director's eventual death, but the resultant film is an unparalleled science fiction masterpiece which brings to mind three of Tarkovsky's favourite films, films that belong to another genre entirely.
Andrei Tarkovsky: Mirror [MP3] 27'33"
For the 100th episode of Left Field Cinema, a special extended examination of Andrei Tarkovsky's greatest masterwork, the 1975 feature film, Mirror. A miracle of a film by the fact of its very existence, a film which may well change the way you perceive the physical boundaries of cinema, a paradoxically personal yet universal film that will haunt you for years to come. Mirror is here examined in relation to my own memories of the film and my memories of cinema in general.

Hidden Classics: The Round-Up [MP3] 12'22"
Miklos Jancso's 1966 excellent film about Hungarian prisoners unwittingly engaged in a deadly game of chess with their captors. A forgotten gem which has now resurfaced and has prompted a new evaluation of the directors works.


Enjoy!



Related :

• Syndromes and a cinema (podcast)
• VCinema podcast 

Conférence sur rien (John Cage)

Qui est John Cage ? [MP3] 1h23'
Rencontre avec Jean-Yves Bosseur, Joëlle Léandre, Saladin Matthieu, Bastian-Dupleix Isabelle (BPI; Centre Georges Pompidou; Paris; 24 Sept 2012) [PDF]

Célébrer la mémoire de John Cage, qui aurait eu cent ans en 2012, dans une bibliothèque ? Nul doute que le musicien, performeur, poète et penseur aurait trouvé l'idée cocasse ; lui dont la pratique, comme celle de Dada, Duchamp ou Satie, défie le monde de l'art et ses institutions.
La Bpi relève ce défi. Dans ses espaces, parmi ses collections de livres et de disques, Bernard Fort interprètera la Conférence sur rien (Lecture on nothing), méditation poético-philosophique précisément réglée, que John Cage considérait comme une composition à part entière.
Puis dans la Petite Salle du Centre Pompidou, le compositeur Jean-Yves Bosseur s'entretiendra avec Matthieu Saladin sur la personnalité, l'influence et l'actualité de Cage. Cette rencontre sera ponctuée par les interventions musicales de la contrebassiste Joëlle Léandre, dont l'oeuvre est tissée de multiples rencontres (de Cage à Steve Lacy en passant par Fred Frith). 

Conférence sur rien (Bernard Fort) 44'22"


Related :

• Sound is just sound (John Cale)
• John Cage: Lecture on nothing (4 March; 3.58AM GMT) [Listen]
• John Cage: Q&A from Norton lectures 1988-89 (5 March; 5.28PM GMT) [Listen]

Comparative Cinematics : Jancsó & Tarr (Kevin B. Lee)

Keyframe: Mapping the Long Take (Tarr Béla, Jancsó Miklós) 5'49"
By Kevin B. Lee from Fandor

[..] Comparing this one shot from The Turin Horse (2011) with the one that we just watched [The Red and The White], you can see how Bela Tarr‘s use of the long take both incorporates and rejects different elements of Jancso’s camerawork. Here the camera is less active and elaborate, and the staging is less busy. Instead, there’s a greater emphasis on physicality. [..] The moments where the camera is static let us focus on the material, tactile qualities of the visuals: stone, wood and dirt. [..]
Bela Tarr uses [long take] to convey the palpable sensations of a lived experience, one of harsh, grueling exertion. Like the Jancso scene, there’s a pendulum-like rhythm to the camera movement as it moves back and both between two poles of activity. Like Jancso, though to a lesser degree, Tarr is able to use off-screen space to economize activity: Notice how by the time the camera returns to the house, the woman has almost finished packing the wagon. [..]

Related :

• Intersections: The Sacrifice and The Turin Horse (Ian Miller; Fandor; 4 Sept 2012) 
• Average Shot Length /  Average shot Length in CCC 

"Asian Minimalism" (Bordwell)

"[..] A Regional Tradition
By the mid-1990s, one stream of Asian art cinema shared many aesthetic features with specialist films from other countries. The prototype is now familiar. The story traces the lives of relatively few characters, with a focus on mundane activities. In place of the earth-shattering conflicts we see in more mainstream entertainments, these films present everyday and intimate human dramas, often embedded in routine activities - riding a train or bus, walking through a neighborhood, eating and drinking with friends and family. While the situations may recall the problems of love and duty we associate with melodrama, the characters tend not to burst into grand emotional displays. Instead, their feelings tend to be muted or stifled, repressed rather than expressed.
In plot, this strain of Asian cinema tends not to present the goal-oriented, problem/solution dramatic arc to be found in mainstream entertainment. Instead, we get episodic plot structures, which favor the loose accumulation of scenes. Characters' backgrounds may be left sketchy, and information about their pasts might never be revealed. Important action may take place between scenes, creating gaps in our knowledge about how the story is unfolding. We may be left with some uncertainties about why characters do what they do or what the outcome of their actions will be.
These qualities, stemming ultimately from postwar Italian Neorealism, are common to many national cinemas. What's significantly new is the visual style. I'm unhappy with the term "Asian minimalism," but I can't think of another that sums up the techniques that became common in many countries during the 1990s. The minimalist label indicates a stringency and austerity that refuses to utilize certain standard film techniques. The style emphasizes the long take, so that a scene is executed in very few shots, perhaps only one. The long takes tend to be made with a fixed camera, so that tracking shots and even pan shots may be avoided. The camera position tends to be fairly distant - usually no closer than medium-shot, often in long shot. This spare technique is well suited to the mundane story action and loosely structured plot. The plainness of presentation obliges us to concentrate on details of behavior that might reveal what is going on below the surface of the action.
This broadly "minimalist" approach recurs in many times and places, notably in the 1910s and in certain European films of the 1970s (by R. W. Fassbinder and Chantal Akerman, for instance). In the 1980s the style reappeared in the work of Hou Hsiao-hsien and other directors of the New Taiwanese Cinema. Ten years later it was very salient in the work of Tsai Ming-liang, Wu Nien-jen, and other Taiwanese directors. The approach also emerged in certain Japanese films, perhaps most famously in Kore-eda Hirokazu's Maborosi (1996) and in the early work of Kitano Takeshi. Recently the style has been taken up by mainland Chinese directors, most notably Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, 2000; The World, 2004), and by Malaysian filmmakers like Ho Yuhang (Rain Dogs, 2006).
To the "maximalism" of Hollywood cinema, of Hong Kong cinema, and of blockbuster filmmaking in Korea and Japan, this style offers an important alternative. Spare in its means, it can yield a wealth of artistic possibilities. The approach obliges us to focus on details, to register slight changes in characters' behavior, and to keep thinking about why we are seeing the story in this way. As a result, directors can offer us subtle and engrossing experiences. By taking away so much, the filmmaker reveals nuances in what remains.

A Narrow Focus
There are many important differences among Asian practitioners of this approach. Kitano uses minimalist technique to create laconic violence and deadpan humor. Tsai takes it toward comedy, often using a visual gag to enliven each shot. Most elaborately, Hou's dense staging techniques create an almost unprecedented gradation of visual emphasis within the fixed frame. HONG Sangsoo has innovated on another level. Accepting the visual premises of the style, he has developed a strikingly original approach to overall narrative architecture.[..]"

“Beyond Asian Minimalism: Hong Sangsoo's Geometry Lesson” (David Bordwell in “Hong Sangsoo”, 2007)

For a 2007 book on Hong Sang-soo, David Bordwell wrote an essay introduced by a general reflection on a certain "minimalism" in non-Hollywood cinema based around Asia. This is all very loosely defined, and all encompassing, as if outside of the Classical norm, everything looked alike. Back in 2007, he told me he already wrote everything he wanted to say about this trend elsewhere... (which includes his books : Narration in the Fiction Film, 1985;  Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, 1988; Figures Traced in Light, 2005). It's interesting to see what he had in mind then.

Naming the thing 

" I'm unhappy with the term "Asian minimalism," but I can't think of another that sums up the techniques that became common in many countries during the 1990s."

"Asian Minimalism"; "A Regional Tradition"; "one stream of Asian art cinema"; "prototype"; "strain of Asian cinema"; "visual style"; "techniques that became common in many countries during the 1990s"; "minimalist label"; "broadly 'minimalist' approach"; "overall narrative architecture"...

The first thing I object is the wide net he uses to catch great many different styles and put them in the same indiscriminate bag. All this because he defines anything existing in cinema according to the Hollywood template, whereas minimalism existed prior to Griffith and the Studios Golden Age. Minimalism is not an "alternative" to mainstream entertainment, it was actually at the origin of cinema . What films of the 1910s is he thinking about that would somehow outdo the precedence of Louis and Auguste Lumière (unedited takes, no dialogue, no plot, no music)? Why always try to subordinate any style to the default commercial standard? 

He's talking about a "trend" as if it was a specific coherent aesthetic, while it is just a loose grammatical descriptor, by dividing the world into two families : the ones that use editing and the ones that don't use editing as much. I'm afraid it is not a pertinent distinction to make, but for a very basic-level taxonomy that was last salient in the 60ies maybe. I believe cinema theory has grown out of such simplistic distinction between edited cinema and non-edited cinema, meaning this is a very superficial observation, a stereotype. 

What?

If he was speaking from Europe, instead of from Hollywood, he wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between the classical format and everything else. There is far less differences between European art cinema and Asian art cinema, on this very basic level of editing style (and justifiably so because this "Asian trend" is at least in part influenced by 60ies European cinema, the other equally important influence would be Mizoguchi and Ozu). So there is no need to isolate the Asian branch on a grammatical level.
We could find stylistic differences that certain Asian filmmakers share more among themselves than with their European  counterparts, but that would be on a more refined level (in term of means rather than ends, postures rather than assertions, situations rather than conflicts, discreet symbolism rather than overt metaphors, showing rather telling, hiding rather than showing...).
Conversely we could find more in common between Hong Sangsoo and Rohmer, Eustache, Rozier, Pollet, Pialat, Garrel, Fassbinder, Cassavetes, the Czech New Wave, than Hong Sangsoo has with any other Korean or Asian filmmaker around him. (I already talked about HSS's specificity here : Sabouraud a minima) So why refer to this as "Asian Minimalism"?
Someone like Ozu is criticized at home for being too "Western", but he's definitely unique and unmatched in the West, the style he developed could be referred to as characteristic of a certain "Asian Minimalism", because he makes use of a typical Japanese rigor inherited from Zen paintings and Shinto geometrical architecture.

Tradition 

The other aspect I reject is the idea of such a "tradition" (See: Forgotten Obsolete English Words #8 : Tradition). When there is academism, formalism, conventions, standardisation of formats, calibration, stereotypes, streamlining, mimetism... we could talk of a convergent goal of many filmmakers (or many countries) to develop, perfect and perpetuate a standard model, and solidify it in a tradition. A tradition is a stable collective culture, with solid, well-defined fundamentals, with clear rules, with followers, with generational transmission of a preserved format, with a common culture surrounding it, nurturing it, reaffirming its posterity. 

But when we talk about various films schools spawning independently (or almost in isolation), developing their own style (or remixing an existing style with a unique twist), exploring new avenues in divergent directions... how could we refer to this multifaceted, incoherent, disorganised, multiform radial spread in the margins as something like a "tradition"? There is no such a thing as an "art cinema tradition", there is no such a thing as a common tradition between Kitano, HHH, Hong Sang-soo, Kore-eda, JZK, Tsai Ming-liang... no more than there is any specific common tradition shared by Cassavetes, Malick, Gus Van Sant, Monte Hellman, Abel Ferrara, Charles Burnett, David Lynch in American art cinema... This is NOT "tradition" that links them, if there is any link to establish between them.

"Minimalism"

Also there is a notable difference between the minimalism of (some films by) Fassbinder (which is barely as minimalist as Modernity of the 60ies) and (some films by) Akerman (which is not merely relying on a lose plot and disconnected dialogue scenes like Fassbinder, but doing away with both of them). Just like there is a crucial distinction to be made between the use of dialogue and voice over in HHH, JZK, Hong Sangsoo, Kore-eda or Kitano, and the quasi-absence of dialogue in Tsai Ming-liang and these "minimalist films" made by Akerman. It is a pretty important difference. They just do NOT develop the same narrative method, nor do they reach the same level of minimalism in the mise en scène. Hou Hsiao-hsien is rather literary and verbal which makes his filmmaking style closer to Terrence Davies or Terrence Malick (to cite "broadly minimalistic-ish" filmmakers from the Western landscape who are fond of their voice over narrators). The voice and the verbal content is important to them, even necessary to the film content. Which is clearly not the case with Jeanne Dielman or Goodbye, Dragon Inn. I wish we could start making the nuance which is more blatant than an hypothetical nuance between 1940ies Hollywood and today's Hollywood!  

The small distinctions in mise en scene techniques Bordwell delineates in this introduction between these Asian "minimalist" filmmakers are very interesting, but they are seemingly limited to a variation in the use of this uniform minimalism (for personal purposes), rather than defining evident branches of an heterogeneous minimalism, to the point when even referring to "minimalism" shall become confusing rather than helpful.

If the distinction between minimalism used for violence or for comedy, for dead pan humour, or visual gags, for dense staging or barren frames... is worth mentioning, then most certainly the use of dialogue or not could be a pretty fundamental identity to acknowledge and integrate.

How?

Even if we talk about an "overall narrative architecture"... it is a bit simplistic to consider that anything outside of the Hollywood format is one monolythic tradition, one standard narrative architecture. Being slower than Hollywood editing doesn't make disparate films become one single recognizable style. (See : To America Everything Foreign is SLOW)

Why speak of minimalism with such broad strokes, such vagueness, such imprecision, such generalities... when film theory has been describing it and commenting it for as long as the Hollywood studios format. It's like if a fairly simplistic and self-explanatory format like the mainstream narrative had many books and precise taxonomy dedicated to it, and ALL THE REST was left in the realm of barely identifiable, amorphic blobs, free-for-all categories, heterogeneous ensembles... Why can't we talk about these films in 2012 other than referring them as "slowish", "minimalistic-ish" or even "traditional"...??? Why can't we find more specific, pointed sub-groups, sub-genres, sub-categories that reflect a little better the diversity of input of the filmmakers who contributed to "minimalist cinema"?

Minimalism was the default label attributed to non-conventional cinema in the 60ies (before academic film theory arose), and it's still the same useless tag bandied about today, without any ounce of improvement. No wonder the uneducated spectators reject art cinema as a block if educated historians talk about it as a block. Academics and critics resist to refer to the Hollywood tradition, in American cinema or in any mainstream entertainment around the world, as a unified trend, a default international style, a standard template... even though it deserves it more than anything else, by definition, by its very nature, by the way it is made according to the same rules everywhere. However, the same people don't feel burdened to resort to such reductive descriptor for art cinema (festival films, default international style, art cinema, minimalism, slow cinema) which is more stylistically diverse (and sometimes as antagonist as Eisenstein and Benning) than mainstream cinema will ever be. Why the double standard? Why the over-complexity in the Hollywood format(s) where none is required, and the over-simplification in art cinema where discrepancy is vital? 

This is not helping film culture. I don't understand.

Related :

• Inaccessible Hollywood narrations / Nuances in "Art Cinema" History
• (Technical) Minimum Profile (January 2007) / Starting from basics all over again / Amusement arc
• Minimalisme,¨Postmodernité et Arte Povera 
• The Future of a Luminescent Cloud - Recent Developments in a Pan-Asian Style (James Udden, Panoptique; 1st Aug 2005)
• The Fullness of Minimalism (Yvette Bíró; Rouge #9, 2006)
• The Post-Tarkovskian bandwagon (Pigott)
• Sabouraud a minima (1-2-3)