My CCC Top10 Canon
I usually refuse to compare CCC films on a merit basis, since this blog is dedicated to the study of the aesthetic, of this narrative mode, not to fuel the craving of detractors for reasons to dismiss "bad" CCC films (because they don't know how to find CCC-specific reasons to blame a film for failing to achieve its goal).
But in the context of Sight & Sound 2012 Top10 canon, let's also establish a referential standard for the quintessence of CCC, the greatest achievements of this particular aesthetic, which is now a little over 40 years old.
My (partial and non-consensual) Top10 ballot of the greatest aesthetic achievements in Contemporary Contemplative Cinema since 1970 :
- Sátántangó (1994/TARR Béla Tarr/Hungary)
- Mother and Son (1997/SOKUROV/Russia)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975/Chantal AKERMAN/Belgium)
- The Turin Horse (2011/TARR Béla/Hungary)
- Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003/WANG Bing/China)
- I don't want to sleep alone (2006/TSAI/Taiwan)
- Los Muertos (2004/ALONSO/Argentina)
- Blissfully Yours (2002/WEERASETHAKUL/Thailand)
- Freedom (2000/BARTAS/Lithuania)
- Our Daily Bread (2005/GEYRHALTER/Germany)
Only 3 titles predate 2000, but they occupy all 3 top ranks! Instead of the big names, I went for the films that rely the less on narrative conventions and dialogue and music and editing (Technical minimum profile), to celebrate the core of the minimalist cinematic image (CCC basics), among the films I know qualify for the contemplative narrative mode (Recommended CCC). Many of these on my ballot could arguably replace numerous winners of the S&S2012 final Top10, yet they wind up outside of their Top250 because none of the voters watched them or didn't learn how to look at and appreciate this new aesthetic...
If there are any CCC fans still alive and kicking, please leave your own personal Top10 in the comments below... Thanks for your contributions over the years.
Related :
Comments
1. Sátántangó (Tarr)
2. The River (Tsai)
3. Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)
4. Three Days (Bartas)
5. Birdsong (Serra)
6. Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr)
7. Distant (Ceylan)
8. Aurora (Puiu)
9. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul)
10. Los Muertos (Alonso)
1. Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr)
2. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai)
3. Jeanne Dielman (Akerman)
4. Sátántangó (Tarr)
5. In Vanda's Room (Costa)
6. The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou)
7. Two Years at Sea (Rivers)
8. Liverpool (Alonso)
9. Silent Light (Reygadas)
10. The Anchorage (Edstrom and Winter)
Still haven't seen any Diaz, Benning, Martin, Serra, Wang, Jayasundara, Omirbaev, or Bartas.
I didn't see The Anchorage, what is it about?
I've decided to include a few contemplative films which you may not have seen, or heard of, but I would highly recommend them to you:
1. L'intrus (Denis)
2. Sut / Milk (Kaplanoğlu)
3. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai)
4. Satantango (Tarr)
5. Aita / Father (Orbe)
6. Voices of Time (Piavoli)
7. Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
8. Still Life (Jia)
9. Los Muertos (Alonso)
10. Three Monkeys (Ceylan)
Indeed I haven't seen, nor have heard of Aita / Father (Orbe) and Voices of Time (Piavoli), so if you could describe them, or talk about them or any useful link, I would greatly appreciate. Thanks
Three of his films are available on youtube, if you wish to preview them before buying them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEM1R5NaQc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKeKbNmhq-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf40Wmo2ogE
http://brooklynrail.org/2008/06/film/celebrating-the-earth-the-films-of-franco-piavoli
I hope you like his work.
As for Aita. This little known Basque masterpiece was a huge shock to me, and it was one of the most satisfying and surprising films I’ve ever seen in many, many years. No plot, other than it focuses on a rundown house in the Basque country. Transcendent piece of cinema, with masterful use of natural light, and an ode to history, family, life, and death. If you’ve seen Guerin’s Train of Shadows, and particularly the interior of the house segment, I’m sure you will enjoy this film.
Trailer for Aita can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFANCW3J6fM
Oh, and finally, I don’t have my own blog, but I have created a list of some other films I’ve seen and would class as contemplative cinema on MUBI:
http://mubi.com/lists/contemplative-cinema-a-few-more-additions-to-the-collection
Thanks again for the great blog. I’m always checking for new updates, to discover new contemplative films :D
1. James Benning - El Valley Centro
2. Peter Hutton - At Sea
3. Nathaniel Dorsky - Hours for Jerome
4. Abraham Ravett - Everything's For You
5. Jeanne Liotta - Observando el Cielo
6. David Gatten - What the Water Said I-3 & 4-6
7. Robert Gardner - Forest of Bliss
8. Deborah Stratman - O'er the Land
9. Sandra Gibson/Luis Recoder - Untitled Film Performances
10. Lisandro Alonso - La Libertad
keep going!
Thanks for your introduction to Piavoli. I wonder why I never heard of it before if he made one film in 1981 (before most CCC) as contemplative as can be... You should have told me sooner. It's more comparable to Pelshian or Reggio maybe, with the use of autonomous shots, intercut seemingly randomly, to create a flurry of point of views on an environment (of course the faster editing may distract contemplation, by adding its own intellectual construction suggesting a certain reading of the images). If you want to write an article on them for Unspoken Cinema, you're welcome.
I'll look for Aita when I can. And there are lots I need to see on your Mubi addendum too.
Thanks for your interest.
@alberto caeiro
I'm glad you think that way. If I was feeding this blog only for the comments, it would have stopped a long time ago I'm afraid...
I see you went for the eccentric Top10, staying away from almost all major CCC figureheads.
I haven't heard of Everything's For You, What the Water Said, Forest of Bliss, O'er the Land, Untitled Film Performances... so same as above, if you have more information, description, links, you're welcome.
@fuKKhead
I wanted to see it, but missed it in the end.
Thanks for the support guys.
When CCC will be acknowledge in 50 years, they'll say it was overlooked by its contemporary unfortunately.
Butterflies Have no Memories
Satantango
Brown Bunny
Colossal Youth
Goodbye Dragon Inn
Blissfully Yours
Vendredi Soir
The Wind Will Carry Us
Los Muertos
In no order.
Still need to see the films of Bing, Martin and Bartas as well as the Koker Trilogy and pre-Mambo Hou.
My list of Contemplative Cinema of the 21st Century. From each director i choose one movie:
01. Sang Sattawat / Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
02. L'intrus / The Intruder (Claire Denis)
03. Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
04. El Calambre (Matias Meyer)
05. Jean Gentil (Israel Cárdenas en Laura Amelia Guzmán)
06. Tee rak / Eternity (Sivaroj Kongsakul)
07. A Torinói ló / The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr)
08. Izgnanie / The Banishment (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
09. Distance (Hirokazu Koreeda)
10. Yurîka / Eureka (Shinji Aoyama)
11. Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da / Once upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
12. Zhantai / Platform (Zhang Ke Jia)
13. Die Große Stille / Into Great Silence (Philip Gröning)
14. Nang mai / Nymph (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang)
15. Last Days (Gus van Sant)
16. Mua he chieu thang dung / At the Height of Summer (Anh Hung Tran)
17. Sudoeste (Eduardo Nunes)
18. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
19. Hwal / The Bow (Ki-duk Kim)
20. Zi hudie / Purple Butterfly (Ye Lou)
21. Sharasojyu / Shara (Naomi Kawase)
22. Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
23. Delta (Kornél Mundruczó)
24. Brownian Movement (Nanouk Leopold)
25. Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (Lav Diaz)
Also Liverpool, Ruhr, Unser täglich Brot, Politist, adjectiv, Los viajes del viento and so on.
Is your forum MovieMeter? I think I've landed on it a couple times because it talked about Contemplative Cinema.
Some films on your list I don't know : El Calambre; Jean Gentil; Tee rak; Sudoeste; Zi hudie; Brownian Movement; Florentina Hubaldo, CTE
If you like Leopold, it is worth checking out another Dutch female director Antoniak's two films. Nothing Personal was was a beautiful tale on conventional love and loneliness, whilst her recent Code Blue is more like Brownian Movement.
El Calambre is from a very interesting director from Mexico. It was his second movie after Wadley:
''Inspired by the films of for instance Abbas Kiarostami, Lisandro Alonso or Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Matias Meyer made a film virtually without dialogue in which man is confronted with himself, his loneliness and the overwhelming landscape. The beautiful long takes are impressive, even if we don't know anything about the protagonist, apart from what we see. His motivation to do what he does remains obscure. Yet the result is clear and powerful, like awakening from a drug high.''
Wadley:
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/wadley/
El Calambre:
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/el-calambre/
You should see the trialer of the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5kBC3W6P8w&feature=player_embedded#!
And his newest movie is like a deconstruction of the westerngenre: http://www.moviemeter.nl/film/79441
Jean Gentil: http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/jean-gentil/
Tee rak: http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/tee-rak/
It's like Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Seen it twice in five days on the IFFR.
Sudoeste:
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/sudoeste/
It's like Bela Tarr but then in Latin-America. Extreme cinemascope. I never seen something like this before...
Florentina Hubaldo, CTE
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/florentina-hubaldo-cte/
My very first Lav Diaz-movie and i like it right away. It was about 366 minutes with no break.
Zi Hudie is from Lou Ye and it is like a historic movie with very little dialogue, long shots, al the typical things about ‘Contemplative Cinema’. You should try it:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Purple-Butterfly-DVD-Region-NTSC/dp/B0006N2EVY/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1347119965&sr=1-1
A lot of interesting movies i see is on International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). You should come over some time. You can find there a lot of obscure movies / documentaries in the World(Art)Cinema.
I have seen al the movies of Leopold and Antoniak because there were distributed in the Netherlands. But i don’t like Code Blue because of is pretension in the last part of the movie…
You should join me on this site: http://whatiwatch.net/
This is my watchlist: http://whatiwatch.net/overview.php?ov=118
Harry, I see on the recommended post you have added a few of Piavoli's films, so I guess you have watched most of them? I'm glad you liked them. How this guy is so unknown is one of the greatest mysteries in cinema for me, and I only discovered his work by chance.
aside from the usual suspects (reygadas, ceylan, kawase, tarr, malick, benning, diaz, denis, weerasethakul, lotznitsa, et al.), here are a bunch of films of the last 1-2 years that i'd recommend checking out:
théo court - ocaso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcKeLJbor_w
israel cárdenas and laura amelia guzmán - jean gentil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRDqYihLWCo
heinz emigholz - perret in frankreich und algerien & parabeton: pier luigi nervi und römischer beton
mathias meyer - the last christeros
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrOBT6vZuPU
michel lipkes - malaventura
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiGic1OmWcw
ben rivers - two years at sea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeJbcBAGF5Y
véréna paravel and lucien castaing-taylor - leviathan
http://vimeo.com/45252172
alejandro fadel - los salvajes (the wild ones)
pat collins - silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8pHGqe6hww
jamie rosales - the dream and the silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF-TefE77HY
pere vilà i barceló - the stoning of st stephen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPqgCkaLbfc
bakur bakuradze - the hunter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwt3_6wDbDc
valerie massadian - nana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqRw1hBpqc
isaki lacuesta - the clay diaries
http://vimeo.com/28654583
mohammad rasoulof - goodbye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT47jlKx-AY
felipe guerrero - corta.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY52E_Afuls
natalia almada - el velador
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_vmwI8mTw
denis côté - bestiaire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-2mgP2TJgI
josé maría de Orbe - aita
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JBomXFcHfg
nicolas pereda - all things were now overtaken by silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehnFbJyKBsc
clarissa campolina and helvécio marins jr. - girimunho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovQFV7kG7dA
jose alvarez - canicula
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLuu2Sto9XM
tatiana huezo - the tiniest place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvkV7WyzLmQ
there's also the new wang bing, yesim ustaoglu and grandrieux to consider but i've yet to see them...
I watched the 3 films available on YouTube, unfortunately on the small screen... (just to know how he edited) These are typically films that must be watched on a huge screen, since they only have images to give. Apparently he received a couple of nods at major festivals... but he didn't make the headlines or left a lasting impression because, I guess, it is only admired as an odd lovely documentary... instead of being situated within a larger aesthetic form : CCC, where it would gain a more palatable talking point for the press.
However, if these 3 films are definitely fitting the strict model of CCC, I didn't find the artistic content, the authorial intention wasn't as powerful or deep as other similar "slide-show" documentary (such as James Benning's or Geyrhalter's Our Daily Bread or Peleshian's or Le Quattro Volte...). They are beautiful, and very much contemplative, very pure. But there are much greater works out there.
@zondunkellicht
Thanks for the links.
Malick, Denis and Grandrieux give the voiceover a pretty important role in their films, that wouldn't exist without the verbal narration. They tend more toward the verbal description than the strictly contemplative observation...
http://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/as+slow+as+possible+contemplative+cinema+of+the+21st+century/verhoeven/
So you prefer "openness" to "alienation" in the technical profile definition?
Personally, I make a distinction between the talkative storytelling (voice over narrator, abundant dialogues, overt verbalization) and the equally slow films that do not resort to the verbal aspect of storytelling. Strictly visual films are in my mind more contemplative, so to speak, than the spoken ones (such as Stellet Licht, Meek's Cutoff, 35 Rhums, Gerry, Shara, L'intrus, Old Joy, Georges Washington, 2046...) even if they talk considerably less than the average mainstream movie. It's just a matter of degrees. Thus "Unspoken Cinema".
But I noticed not everyone agrees with me. ;)