Unspoken Cinema

Slow Cinema by Zachary Lewis and Michael Sicinski Zach is a Mississippi-based, New-York-bound freelance film writer. He has been a guest on Mousterpiece Cinema and Almost Arthouse , and he has written for Sound On Sight and In Review Online . Michael is a writer and teacher based in Houston, Texas. He has written for Cinema Scope , Cineaste , Cargo, Mubi and Fandor . He also maintains a film review website, The Academic Hack . This exchange was originally published in August 2014 by the online magazine TO BE (CONT'D) . Thank you to Peter Labuza (founder of To Be (Cont'd)), and the authors Zachary Lewis and Michael Sicinski for giving their permission to re-post this content. Part One What Do We Mean by Slow? Michael, When my love for cinema began, I skipped filmmakers like Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese, and classic Hollywood in general, in favor of the austere arthouse flair of Béla Tarr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Manuel de Oliveira, and C...

Today was announced the line-up for the 75th Venice Film Festival (August 29th - September 8th 2018) Surprise : Tsai Ming-liang brings a new film, Ni De Lian / Your Face (documentary on Lee Kang-Sheng), 76 min, out of competition !!! New Carlos Reygadas, Nuestro Tiempo (fiction) 173 min, in competition, Reygadas plays in his film! New Frederick Wiseman, Monrovia, Indiana (documentary) 223 min, out of competition, New Sergei Loznitsa, Process (documentary) 125 min

For the 2018 re-publishing of his 1971 book Transcendental Style in Film , Paul Schrader, to illustrate his new introduction, composed a chart for Durational Cinema and today's Transcendental Style ( see chart here ). He organised his chart according to the USA-centric theatrical exhibition of films, divided by a "Tarkovsky ring" separating commercial films (inside) from art installations (outside). But too many great CCC auteurs are relegated outside, to where he calls "dead ends" of durational cinema. This makes no sense on the international arthouse market.  In France, for instance, the arthouse circuit is much more accomodating than in the USA. Films like Tarr's Satantango screened in arthouses in 2 parts. Wang Bing's Tiexi Qu : West of Tracks had its world premiere at the Reflet Médicis, an arthouse in Paris, in 4 screenings, not in an art gallery. All of Tsaï, Bartas, Costa, Weerasethakul, Andersson, Alonso, Jia Zhangke, Massadia...