Unspoken Cinema

Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "Society typically dictates the duration and manner in which we attend to objects, people, or events. In other words, the length and type of our attention are regulated by unwritten rules of behavior, forming a part of the social order. When someone focuses on something longer than usual, particularly something socially or aesthetically marginalized, it can challenge established social orders. When attention is prolonged beyond customary social norms, the usual controls over how we observe and perceive can be temporarily suspended, disrupting habitual modes of perception. Slow cinema filmmakers slow down the rhythm of the film and extend shots to encourage this sustained attention. Through slowness, they not only slow the narrative but also challenge social norms and how we typically engage with what we see." Amiri, Sepideh;  Marvā Nabīlī’s The Sealed Soil as Slow Cinema . In Cinema Iranica . Encyclopaedia Iranica Foun...

Illustration by Benoit Rouilly See also at Unspoken Cinema: Slow Cinemas chart (Discursions in Time) CCC tronc commun Schrader's Durational Map v. CCC Slow Cinema Analysis (diagram) CCC or Not? MARGINS: On The Side Line of Contemplative Cinema

  Tsai Ming-liang: El cine y la conciencia del tiempo (YouTube) 6'42" (Cátedra Ingmar Bergman UNAM) 9 Abril 2021 "Las películas de Tsai Ming-liang son fragmentos de un diario donde se registran las anotaciones de un observador, invitaciones a la contemplación de la vida como una expresión del tiempo. Esta conversación en la Cátedra Extraordinaria Ingmar Bergman en cine y teatro, en el marco de FICUNAM, es una oportunidad de acercarnos a esa mirada poética que danza entre la soledad, el deseo, los cuerpos, la intimidad y el silencio."

"[..] Bi Gan ne sédimente rien. Sa mémoire est topologique, non géologique. Pas de couches qui s’empilent, mais une surface unique qui se retourne sur elle-même, comme un ruban de Möbius : on croit avancer sur l’envers du temps et l’on se retrouve, sans avoir traversé de bord, sur son endroit. C’est pour cela qu’il n’y a jamais de changement de grain chez Bi Gan, jamais de texture qui daterait une strate plutôt qu’une autre. L’Histoire ne se dépose pas au fond de l’image, elle hante l’espace tout entier. Dangmai est une zone de contamination temporelle, où passé, présent et futur circulent sur la même bande, sans jamais se croiser en un point qu’on pourrait localiser. [..]" Christophe Bisson; « Kaili Blues » : Les plis du temps ; 7 juillet 2026 ; chez Burdstack

  The Role of Water in Tsai Ming-liang's "The Hole" (1998) (YouTube) 5' (CinemaBlog) 30 Jan 2021  "Here, I take a deep dive into the role played by the motif of water in Tsai-Ming-liang's "The Hole" (1998)."

  139. HKIFF50: Interview with Tsai Ming-liang (Deep Cut) 27'38" ENGLISH 5 july 2026 "The seventh and final director interview Wilson conducted at this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival is with the legendary Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang. Wilson asks one of his cinematic heroes about the state of filmmaking today, his methods for working with actors, and his decades-long collaboration with Lee Kang-sheng."

  When a Director Lets Time Tell the Story (YouTube) 10'17" (Rognosc) 16 Juin 2026

  Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel) | Film complet | ARTE Cinema (YouTube) 1h19'37" (ARTE Cinema) 1st July 2026 "Un film disponible jusqu'au 30/09/2026 "L'idée, c'était de faire des chutes d'un film qui n'existerait pas avec une star, Jean Seberg. Alors, j'ai conçu Les Hautes Solitudes comme quelque chose de très brut sur son visage" (Phillipe Garrel) Un visage hébété de femme, entre veille et sommeil (celui de la chanteuse Nico, alors compagne de Philippe Garrel) se laisse contempler quelques minutes, puis disparaît. Dans la pénombre d'un appartement, Laurent Terzieff, cheveux en bataille, accueille et étreint une jeune femme (Tina Aumont), comme lui d'une beauté et d'une jeunesse saisissantes. Dans une chambre (du même appartement, d'un autre ?), en plein jour, Jean Seberg, vêtue d'une sage chemise de nuit, semble lutter contre les vestiges d'un rêve angoissant. En contraste étrange avec l'intimité très ...

 CONTEMPLATIVE CINEMA ARTICLES CCC Tronc commun FRANCAIS Mainstream Vs Contemplative Cinema (Pros & Cons) Slow Cinemas chart (Discursions in Time) Mapping of CCC auteurs CITATIONS Poétique de la rêverie au cinéma (Adrien-Gabriel Bouché) Back to the Spectators Themselves (Jakob Boer) Retrancher le monde. HU Bo par Olivier Zuchuat Stillmoving (Faldalen) Cinéma de la patience (Louise Ibáñez-Drillières) Contemplation and Resistance (Weerasethakul) Béla TARR (revue de presse 2026) La lenteur comme expérience du monde (Hilal Zeynep Ahiskali) Le temps créateur dans le cinéma contemporain : Béla Tarr et Gus Van Sant (Moduk Koo) Tableau Vivants = Figure of Return (Ágnes Pethő) Ma: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm (Book) It's Time To Consider Bridges (James Benning) The Eloquence of Silence (Tanya Shilina-Conte) Contemplating Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Aziz Barkın Kadıoğlu) TURKISH A Cinema of Contemplation, A Cinema of Discernment: Spectatorship, lntertextuality and Attractions...

In a region where cinema is measured in song sequences, choreographed fight scenes, and the explosive first-weekend box office of a Rajinikanth release, Abdul Rahman makes films in which very little happens, and that very little is everything. A filmmaker, writer, and cultural organiser based in Tamil Nadu, Rahman occupies a position that is as rare as it is precarious: that of a contemplative filmmaker working entirely outside the logic — commercial, narrative, sensory (also known as “masala cinema”)  — of Kollywood, the Chennai industry that dominates not only Tamil cinema but the cultural imagination of over 80 million people. Where Kollywood offers spectacle, Rahman offers stillness. Where it provides resolution, he leaves space. Where it speaks loudly and continuously, he chooses, with conviction, to fall silent. A decade ago he founded Missed Movies, a project of what Tamil audiences have been systematically denied, or have systematically looked away from. More recently, alo...

New addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "Responding to the accelerating technological landscape and contemporary life, this paper researches how the concept of ‘time’ plays a significant role. The author, an experimental filmmaker, charts an experiential journey within several pivotal ‘dream films’, along with relevant artists’ moving images in relation to time and slowness in the moving image as critical media.  As contemporary life has become more and more fast paced, and one year on the impact of COVID-19 is still being felt, the idea of stillness is beginning to become a more desirable commodity. The author explores ‘slow cinema’, acknowledging seminal directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Claire Denis, as well as art films which frequently emphasise long takes, offering minimalist aesthetics with little or no narrative. In an endeavour to portray different  temporalities and reveal and allude to the invisibility of time, the author relates to Julia Kristeva’s notio...

 New addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "This thesis explores Slow Cinema as a form of quiet resistance to contemporary cultures of acceleration through carefully designed mise-en-scène and sustained duration. As life is increasingly shaped by speed and efficiency, cinema has mirrored these changes implementing rapid editing and spectacle. Drawing primarily on Byung-Chul Han’s (2015) exploration of “burnout” provides a framework for understanding these changes.  By situating this thesis within this cultural context, the research considers how slow cinema disrupts linear time and space and offers an alternative affective experience that encourages contemplation, relaxation and stillness as a response to the exhausting, pressurised current cultural condition.   Through a visual analysis of Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) directed by Tsai Ming-liang, this thesis examines how production design creates interstitial spaces that function as temporal containers, al...

The old man (Venkatesan) 8th Street (2026/Abdul RAHMAN/India) 1h Film review by Benoit Rouilly for Unspoken Cinema (containing spoilers voluntarily). A clean, well directed piece by Abdul Rahman, who in just one contemplative hour and three cryptic chapters, evokes the devious outlines of five mysterious stories within four opaque characters… Some stories will remain unresolved as others stand open-ended. Everything takes place, practically in real time around 2am, in a single night-bar, named “8th Street”. A lovely place, with marble pedestal tables, wooden chairs and comfy booths. There are rounded corners to the door-frames like on a boat. Coffee bean wooden patterns form a see through ceiling. And a neo-classical sepia painting on the back wall, representing customers at coffee tables, completes the atmosphere. The protagonist enters the bar last, a clean, well lighted place, and penetrates by the front door this “huis-clos” (=a single action takes place in a single space behind c...

Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "This article examines how Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) creates sacred experience through systematic absence within contemporary slow cinema aesthetics. While previous scholarship has focused on religious content in spiritual cinema, this analysis demonstrates how formal techniques—particularly strategic concealment and extended duration—generate contemplative states without explicit religious references. Drawing on Paul Schrader’s transcendental style theory and recent slow cinema scholarship, the article traces how Kiarostami adapts Persian poetic traditions, particularly concepts of pardeh (veiling) and the interplay between bāṭin (hidden) and ẓāhir (manifest), to create meaning through what remains unseen. The dying woman who never appears, the acousmatic voices of invisible characters, and the village spaces kept off-screen transform absence from lack into generative force. Through comparative analys...