Posts

Showing posts from August, 2024

Aesthetic Features of Slow Cinema (Cecilia Liu)

aesthetic features of slow cinema from Cecilia Liu on Vimeo . 4'59"  

Slow Cinemas or Contemplative Cinema (Venn diagram)

Image
  (Designed by Benoit Rouilly) This Venn diagram shows exactly how Contemplative Cinema overlaps with Slow Cinema, and how the latter engulfs Transcendental Style and Modernist Cinema. There are only about 20 names in common, the most talked about auteurs, which contributes to the confusion. Some critics believe the two labels are interchangeable, that they are two sides of the same coin. Nothing could be more wrong. Slowness, which defines alone the criterion for Slow Cinema, encompasses a lot of different slownesses at various period of history.  Even though Contemplative Cinema begins as early as the 60ies (like Modernist Cinema), the aesthetics these Contemplative filmmakers have in common is a lot more coherent, than for Slow Cinemas. The style of successive eras in film history, such as Transcendental Style (as defined by Paul Schrader in 1972 who groups together Ozu, Dreyer and Bresson (who self-defined a typology for himself already: "Cinématographe", which is distinc

Long Takes and Dedramatisation in Slow Cinema (Tyrone O'Neill)

Teddy O'Neill Slow Cinema FILM301 from Tyrone O'Neill on Vimeo . 4'41" (21 Sept 2023)  

WordCloud: Contemplative Authors

Image
  (Designed by Benoit Rouilly) All the film critics, scholars and journalists in the world, who contributed to define the bounderies of Contemplative Cinema / Slow Cinema, by writing film reviews, articles, books or theses. (To my knowledge) Read also at Unspoken Cinema: Total Contemplative Cinema Publications (2005-2024) CCC Auteurs citations in corpus 2004-2023

Slow Cinema and Post Horror (Feng Xiangbo)

Image
  Slow Cinema aand Post Horror (YouTube) 11'49" (冯相博 Feng Xiangbo) 13 Aug 2024

Total Contemplative Cinema Publications (2005-2024)

Image
  From the publication references collected on my Library page , I plotted between 2005 and 2024, the various books (general books on the subject of Contemplative/Slow Cinema), Theses (Thesis available online), Articles (Scholarly publication articles available online), and Monographies (Books on a single Contemplative auteur). This "study" is far from comprehensive, but it might give a statistical reprensentation of the total publications out there, or at least a portion of it. Read also at Unspoken Cinema: Unspoken Cinema Blogathon #1 Unspoken Cinema Blogathon #2 Nick James attack on Slow Cinema Dan Kois attack on Slow Cinema Point of Saturation by Barrington Paul Schrader: slow cinema is dying a slow death CCC Auteurs Citations in Corpus 2004-2023

Nomadland As Slow Cinema (Combat Timbs)

Image
  Nomadland As Slow Cinema (YouTube) 10'59"  (Combat Timbs) 9 Aug 2024 YouTube channel : Combat Timbs  

Unspoken Posters (2): Jeanne Dielman

Image
  Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975/Chantal Akerman/Belgium) (Designed by Benoit Rouilly) See also at Unspoken Cinema: Why Jeanne Dielman is the best film of all time?

The Beauty and Horror of the Mundane (Akerman)

Image
I would like the viewer to have a physical experience of the time used in each shot. To have the physical experience of time unfolding inside you, of time entering you. Chantal AKERMAN, 2003 quoted in the article by Oleksandra Kalinichenko, " _UNDERSCORE, The Beauty And Horror of The Mundane " (7 May 2024)  

Life If I Knew How To Say No (Megan Tan)

Image
A video essay inspired by Wim Wenders' Perfect Days   Life If I Knew How To Say No (YouTube) 4' (Megan Tan) 8 Aug 2024 Megan Tan socials:  YouTube @MeganTanArt   Instagram  @megantanhweewen   TikTok @megantanart

Contemplative Auteurs Poster (Chantal AKERMAN)

Image
  (Designed by Benoit Rouilly)

Unspoken Posters (1): Days

Image
  Days (2020/TSAI Ming-liang/Taiwan) (Designed by Benoit Rouilly) See also at Unspoken Cinema: Contemplative Auteurs Poster (TSAI Ming-liang) CCC Masters: TSAI Ming-liang

Slow Cinemas Analysis (diagram)

Image
  Slow(ish) Cinema is all this! That umbrella term covers all Slow Cinemas, including CCC (Contemplative Cinema) which is only a small subset of it all. For instance, Ozu, Bresson, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, Jarmusch, Ceylan, Hong Sang-soo, Malick, are all considered part of "Slow Cinema", whereas they are excluded from Contemplative Cinema, for various reasons (as seen on the diagram). When you add up Slowness, Long Takes, Minimalism, Realism, Verisimilitude, Atmosphere, Poetry and Ennui, you get Contemplative Cinema. When you substract from Slow Cinema the following concepts : Edits, Narrative Arc, Fantasy, Staging, Politics, Monologue, Score, Dialogues, Lyricism, Words, you get Contemplative Cinema too. Slowness, Long Takes > Minimalism > Realism, Verisimilitude > Atmosphere, Poetry > Ennui >  Contemplative Cinema See also at Unspoken Cinema: CCC or Not? Starting From Basics All Over Again CCCFAQ#6: What are the main features of Contemplative Cinema

Empire at 60 (Warhol)

Image
Empire (1964/Warhol/USA) Andy Warhol's 8h long epic contemplative (stasis) documentary has 60 years old! Filmed 25-26 July 1964, from 8:06 pm to 2:42 am, at the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation on the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building (16 blocks from the Empire State Building) by Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas, on 1,200 foot of 16mm film rolls. The Empire State Building will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Andy Warhol’s black-and-white silent film, “Empire,” with an exclusive screening on the building’s 80th Floor, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art and the Andy Warhol Museum. (screened between the 25 and 28 july 2024) "To see time go by..." is Warhol's answer to why this experimental project?

Evolution & Legacy of Slow Cinema (Barrington)

One of the latest addition to the thesis list on the  Library Page : "Having emerged at the start of the century, slow cinema has become a common feature on the international film festival circuit and has been thoroughly explored within print film criticism (Romney 2010; Dargis and Scott 2011), online film blogs (Tuttle, 2014) as well as in scholarship in Film Studies (Çağlayan 2018; de Luca 2014). I will explore the emergence of the phenomenon in detail across this introduction, but I mention this here to provide a sense of the period into which my own thesis will intervene.  I began this thesis in 2012, a moment after the initial development of the idea of slow cinema, which was understandably focused on questions of terminology, definition and meaning. In other words: establishing the legitimacy and the key terms of slow cinema as an object of critical debate and academic study. It should also be mentioned that since I started the thesis, there has been a steady increase in att

Contemplative Core & Tectonic Plates

Image
The core figures of Contemplative Cinema could be summed up by the names: WANG Bing, Roy ANDERSSON, TSAI Ming-liang, Lisandro ALONSO, and Béla TARR, for being consistently, profoundly, and magnificently contemplative... (See Iconic Directors of Contemplative Cinema ) Out of the minimalist centre radiate trustworthy rings of authentic contemplatives, up to the far reach of more conventional edges, maybe more "slow" than "contemplative”, but still minimalist. However, under this uniting banner of “Contemplative Cinema” surges the distinctive rifts between the tectonic plates of more cohesive sub-divisions… because it’s crucial to extract their diversity from their resemblance, their personality from their unity. From this widespread of satellites emerges 5 more stylistically coherent sub-families sorted by affinity tending towards "Art" (Art Gallery and Minimalist Formalism), "Narrative" (but still Minimalist), "Amateur" (Minimalist Hyperreali