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Feet on a relentless path, headspace in a cloud (film review: The North)

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The North (2025/Bart Schrijver/Netherlands) The highlands, right in between the clouds and the mountains. Two friends, and solitude all along the way… There was only one goal: reaching the northernmost cape of Scotland from Glasgow, 600 km on foot through the rough terrain, barren or wet wilderness, during extreme atmospheric conditions. Was it a dare, a bucket list or a dream? Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido), former roommates, decided to set apart 30 days from their busy lives and accomplish this adventure together. We don’t know who they are, where they come from, what they want to become… but we’ll discover it, along with them, on the way to Cape Wrath. After a blind phone conversation from the past (as if recorded on an answering machine) of two students planning a farewell party, like a usual “Tuesday night” of drinking at the pub, the film cleverly flashes forward right away to a decade later. All we know about them through this phone call overture is that they use...
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Zen Concepts in Contemplative Performance (2): Iki

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  Claude Sonnet 4.0: The intersection of Japanese Zen aesthetics and contemplative cinema reveals profound possibilities for performance that transcend conventional Western acting methodologies. Four essential concepts operate within a complementary theoretical framework: Danshari functions as a foundational methodology for conscious elimination, Iki and Seijaku work as experiential principles governing refined presence, while Yuugen represents the atmospheric mystery that emerges from their synthesis. Together, they create a triadic model progressing from methodological preparation through embodied execution to perceptual reception, challenging performers to locate truth through restraint rather than demonstration and essential simplicity rather than elaborate character construction. 粋 IKI Understated Elegance Iki represents an aesthetic philosophy that finds sophisticated beauty in restraint, elegance in understatement, and refinement through the conscious rejection of exces...
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5 formes de l'inertie (Harmut Rosa)

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 Dernière addition à la page Bibliographie : "Sur la relation entre le mouvement et l'inertie dans la modernité. Les catégories de l'inertie énumérées dans la section précédente montrent clairement qu'il est impossible de soutenir que 'tout' irait plus vite depuis l'avènement de la modernité. Bien des choses conservent leur vitesse (ou leur lenteur) d'origine, et certaines d'entre elles ont même tendance à ralentir. Toutefois cette formule inlassablement répétée reflète la conviction, littéralement constitutive de la modernité, qu'un déplacement de l'équilibre entre inertie et accélération se produit constamment et irrésistiblement au bénéfice de cette dernière. [..] En effet, aucune des formes de l'inertie que j'ai présentées ne représente un contrepoids structurel et/ou culturel équivalent à la dynamique de l'accélération de la modernité. [..]" "Ce qui fait à son tour que, dans un environnement marqué par des possibi...
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Zen Concepts in Contemplative Performance (1): Danshari

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Claude Sonnet 4.0: The intersection of Japanese Zen aesthetics and contemplative cinema reveals profound possibilities for performance that transcend conventional Western acting methodologies. Four essential concepts operate within a complementary theoretical framework: Danshari functions as a foundational methodology for conscious elimination, Iki and Seijaku work as experiential principles governing refined presence, while Yuugen represents the atmospheric mystery that emerges from their synthesis. Together, they create a triadic model progressing from methodological preparation through embodied execution to perceptual reception, challenging performers to locate truth through restraint rather than demonstration and essential simplicity rather than elaborate character construction. 断捨離 DANSHARI Essential Reduction Danshari represents the foundational methodology within this theoretical framework, operating as a meta-aesthetic principle that governs all subsequent creative choices ...
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Slow Burn (Eye Filmmuseum)

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"[..] For proponents of the slow-cinema idea, an action should take just as long as it needs; a car approaching from a long distance in a broad landscape doesn’t have to appear in front of the camera in close-up within two seconds (see Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, for example). Carrying out domestic chores can be filmed in real time; cooking a potato takes place according to the laws of physics, not those of cinematography (as in, for example, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman). [..]" Thijs Havens (Eye Filmmuseum; Netherlands) Special screening programme (part of the Nuri Bilge Ceylan retrospective, Inner Landscape , 18 Jan-1 Jun 2025): Koza (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey 1995, 20') Prologús (Béla Tarr, Hungary 2004, 5')  La chambre (Chantal Akerman, Belgium 1972, 11') Szél (Marcell Iványi, Hungary 1996, 6')  The Night (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan 2021, 19')
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Zen Aesthetics through Contemplative Spectatorship (9) Hi

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     Claude Sonnet 3.7:  Japanese aesthetic principles derived from Zen tradition offer a powerful lens for understanding contemplative cinema across cultures. This series examines ten concepts forming a progression from initial receptivity toward deeper awareness—revealing how contemplative films create spaces that transcend narrative efficiency. These aesthetic principles don't merely describe techniques but constitute an entire epistemology of viewing where cinema becomes a meditative practice, enabling access to dimensions of experience often overlooked in conventional spectatorship.   秘  Hi The Hidden Depths of Cinematic Experience Hi, a concept denoting that which is hidden, concealed, or mysteriously occluded, represents one of the most profound dimensions of Japanese aesthetic philosophy, addressing realms of experience that by their very nature resist explicit articulation or immediate apprehension. Unlike Western aesthetic traditions that often pr...
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Perfect Days in the Internet Age (FilmFourAll)

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  Perfect Days in the Internet Age (YouTube) 9'34" (FILMFOURALL) 9 may 2025
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Zen Aesthetics through Contemplative Spectatorship (8) Mu & Bi

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    Claude Sonnet 3.7:  Japanese aesthetic principles derived from Zen tradition offer a powerful lens for understanding contemplative cinema across cultures. This series examines ten concepts forming a progression from initial receptivity toward deeper awareness—revealing how contemplative films create spaces that transcend narrative efficiency. These aesthetic principles don't merely describe techniques but constitute an entire epistemology of viewing where cinema becomes a meditative practice, enabling access to dimensions of experience often overlooked in conventional spectatorship.     無  Mu &  微   Bi Nothingness and Subtle Profundity Mu and Bi represent perhaps the most philosophically profound and aesthetically sophisticated concepts in Japanese thought, articulating complementary dimensions of experience that conventional Western metaphysics has struggled to adequately conceptualize. Mu transcends simplistic understanding as mere absen...
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Renoir (Chie HAYAKAWA) in Cannes 2025

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  RENOIR - Press Conférence - English - Cannes 2025 (YouTube) 41'10" (Festival de Cannes) 18 may 2025 Release date : Cannes : 17 may 2025 (World Premiere) Japan : 20 june 2025 France : 17 Septembre 2025
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The Timeless Sloth (Anouk De Clercq)

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 "[..] Together, these films reflect De Clercq’s ongoing interest in slowness, lyricism, and the poetics of perception. They create space for viewers to question dominant temporalities – those of progress, urgency, and consumption – and instead attune to subtler rhythms: geological, animal, ancestral. In doing so, The Timeless Sloth becomes not just a screening, but a kind of temporal recalibration – an extension of the exhibition’s contemplative spirit and an invitation to dwell, sense, and simply be." (Anouk De Clerq, Contemporary Art Center CAC, Vilnius) Programme: Tales from the Source by Leonard Pongo Now, At Last! by Ben Rivers
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Zen Aesthetics through Contemplative Spectatorship (7) Ki

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   Claude Sonnet 3.7:  Japanese aesthetic principles derived from Zen tradition offer a powerful lens for understanding contemplative cinema across cultures. This series examines ten concepts forming a progression from initial receptivity toward deeper awareness—revealing how contemplative films create spaces that transcend narrative efficiency. These aesthetic principles don't merely describe techniques but constitute an entire epistemology of viewing where cinema becomes a meditative practice, enabling access to dimensions of experience often overlooked in conventional spectatorship.   氣  Ki The Vital Energy of Cinematic Experience Ki represents a foundational concept in East Asian cosmology and aesthetics that transcends simple categorization, functioning simultaneously as philosophical principle, physiological phenomenon, and aesthetic quality. This concept of vital energy or life force originated in ancient Chinese philosophy before being extensively develo...
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Take your Time: On the Pleasures of Cinematic Slowness (Jakob Boer)

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 Jakob Boer here: Benoit kindly invited me to contribute a post to his wonderful blog (that I’ve been following for many years now). I would like to take this opportunity to report on the findings of a research project that I conducted on slow cinema spectatorship. On this blog, in film criticism, and in academic writing, slow cinema has been subject to lively and sometimes heated debates. Yet, some aspects of this contemporary cinematic phenomenon were left largely unexamined, which was the impetus for me to dedicate three years of my life to studying the topic. Scholars had done major film analytic work on the topic previously, and cultural critics had done the work of positioning slow cinema in a wider slow movement. Yet, I sensed that the unique type of aesthetic experience slow cinema affords, remained relatively unexplored. To me, the vocabulary used to describe it lacked richness and precision. I thought that the easy oppositions used in film theory–between fast/slow, atten...
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Zen Aesthetics through Contemplative Spectatorship (6) Ishin-Denshin

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  Claude Sonnet 3.7:  Japanese aesthetic principles derived from Zen tradition offer a powerful lens for understanding contemplative cinema across cultures. This series examines ten concepts forming a progression from initial receptivity toward deeper awareness—revealing how contemplative films create spaces that transcend narrative efficiency. These aesthetic principles don't merely describe techniques but constitute an entire epistemology of viewing where cinema becomes a meditative practice, enabling access to dimensions of experience often overlooked in conventional spectatorship.   以心伝心  Ishin-Denshin Direct Transmission Beyond Words Ishin-Denshin represents one of the most profound and elusive concepts in Japanese aesthetic and spiritual tradition, describing a mode of communication that transcends conventional linguistic and conceptual boundaries. The term itself—literally "from mind to mind" or "heart-to-heart transmission"—emerged from Zen Buddhist cont...
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Le mutisme au cinéma (Milène Chave)

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 Dernière addition à la page Bibliothèque sur Unspoken Cinema : "Avant même l’arrivée du parlant, le cinéma fut colonisé par le verbe : la parole fut dès lors instrument du discours, guide du spectateur. [..] Le sujet du silence nous a toujours fasciné car il touche à l’indicible, au non-dit. L’exclusion des mots qui, s’ils étaient prononcés, en réduiraient leurs sens, engendre une polyphonie du (des) sens en même temps qu’un pouvoir émotionnel fort. Elle est une capacité d’expression du langage très utilisée au cinéma. Dans cet univers d’absence de voix, le mutisme nous intéresse particulièrement : il nous renvoie à nos moments de doute, à ces instants où il est trop dur ou difficile de parler, où les mots ne semblent pas pouvoir exprimer ce qui est réellement ressenti. La richesse de ses significations et de ses utilisations permet au cinéma de mener le spectateur vers un travail d’intériorisation, dans un monde plus subjectif que pra...
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Zen Aesthetics through Contemplative Spectatorship (5) Wabi-Sabi

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Claude Sonnet 3.7:  Japanese aesthetic principles derived from Zen tradition offer a powerful lens for understanding contemplative cinema across cultures. This series examines ten concepts forming a progression from initial receptivity toward deeper awareness—revealing how contemplative films create spaces that transcend narrative efficiency. These aesthetic principles don't merely describe techniques but constitute an entire epistemology of viewing where cinema becomes a meditative practice, enabling access to dimensions of experience often overlooked in conventional spectatorship.   侘寂  Wabi-Sabi The Beauty in Impermanence and Imperfection Wabi-Sabi constitutes perhaps the most profound and distinctive contribution of Japanese aesthetics to global philosophical discourse on beauty, representing a radical counter-perspective to Western aesthetic traditions centered on permanence, perfection, and ideal forms. This aesthetic philosophy emerged from the convergence of Zen B...
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