Unspoken Cinema

Direct Action Direct Action (2024/CAILLEAU/RUSSELL/France/Germany) DOC Dahomey (2024/DIOP/FR/Senegal/Benin) DOC Evil Does Not Exist (2023/HAMAGUCHI/Japan) Man in Black (2023/WANG Bing/France) C’est pas moi (2024/CARAX/France) Youth (Spring) (2023/WANG Bing/China) In Our Day (2023/HONG Sangsoo/S.Korea) The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024/RASSOULOF/Iran) Flow (2024/ZILBALODIS/Latvia) Poor Things (2023/LANTHIMOS/USA) Le deuxième act (2024/DUPIEUX/France) Kinds of Kindness (2024/LANTHIMOS/USA) Caught By The Tides (2024/JIA/China) All We Imagine As Light (2024/KAPADIA/India) Daaaaaalí (2023/DUPIEUX/France) The Zone of Interest (2023/GLAZER/UK) Memory (2023/FRANCO/USA) The Room Nextdoor (2024/ALMODOVAR/USA) I'm Still Here (2024/SALLES/Brazil) The Monk And The Gun (2023/DORJI/Bhutan) *In purple: Contemplative Cinema

  PERFECT DAYS (2024) a Cinematic Ode to the Ordinary | in-depth film review (YouTube) 8'06" (Up in the Air ft. Zürich) March 1st 2024

  The Straight Story: The Little Things In Life | The Essay Library Video Jam 2025 (YouTube) 4'14" (Obscure Film) 20 Jan 2025 "An exercise in considering the little things (during a high speed video essay making jam)"

  SLOW FILM FESTIVAL 2025

  HOW TO RECOMMEND SLOW CINEMA - Video Essay (YouTube) 13'41" (Archie Marshall) 16 Jan 2025

  Documentaries where the journey is the destination (YouTube) 7'20" (James DeLisio) 20 jan 2025 "In film, we often like to say that it's more about the journey than the destination. But is that always true? Video essay by James DeLisio & Max Teeth, created as part of the Essay Library's 2025 48 Hour Video Jam. We created two videos about the sensory and durational journeys taken in several documentary films." Documentaries on the sensory journey (YouTube) 6'19" (Max Teeth) 20 jan 2025 "I made this video essay in one weekend with my friend James Delisio for the Essay Library's Essay Jam. we made two parallel essays exploring the somatosensory and durational experience of several documentaries (and a few narrative films)."

 

  Chantal Akerman: Adventures in Perception | BFI Trailer (YouTube) 1'33" (BFI) 10 jan 2025 ‘I want people to experience film in their body.’ – Chantal Akerman ‘Where are you Anna?’ drifts a voice out of an answerphone in Akerman’s mesmerising 1978 road trip Les Rendez-vous d’Anna. We could ask the same of the Belgian auteur. For where do we place her cinema? Across 40 films, Anna is one of many stand-ins for the director, who was ahead of her time making introspective odysseys from an innately feminist, queer, and Jewish perspective but who believed ‘all labels have to be thrown away’. Akerman had many deep-rooted obsessions beyond self-portraiture: confinement, mother-daughter relationships, exile, anxiety and loneliness, desire and the impossibility of human connection. But she never repeated herself. Her formally audacious films of the 70s, exemplified by Jeanne Dielman, reckoned with cinema’s essence – time and space – but her obsessions would go on to surface in comedie...

 Chantal Akerman. Travelling Jeu de Paume (Paris) | 28 septembre 2024-19 janvier 2025 "Le Jeu de Paume rend hommage à la cinéaste, artiste et écrivaine belge Chantal Akerman (Bruxelles 1950 – Paris 2015) à travers une exposition exceptionnelle, réalisée avec le Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, la Fondation Chantal Akerman et la cinémathèque royale de Belgique." Exposition Chantal Akerman. Travelling (YouTube) 40" (Jeu de Paume) 20 Sept 2024 "Le Jeu de Paume rend hommage à la cinéaste, artiste et écrivaine belge Chantal Akerman (Bruxelles 1950 – Paris 2015) à travers une exposition exceptionnelle. « Chantal Akerman. Travelling » retrace le parcours atypique de cette figure emblématique qui ne cesse d’inspirer et fasciner des générations d’artistes et cinéphiles." Note d'intention (extrait) pour Jeanne Dielman Dépliant & catalogue de l'exposition Ecouter aussi : Coppola/Akerman, des autoportraits en irrécupérables | France Culture  (1...

  Pillow shots - OZU Yasujiro (YouTube) 9'35" (Unknown)  * * * "The term “pillow shot” was coined in connection with Ozu’s work by the critic Noël Burch in his book To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema: “I call these images pillow-shots, proposing a loose analogy with the ‘pillow-word’ of classical poetry.” In a note, Burch cites Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner thus: “Makurakotoba or pillow-word: a conventional epithet or attribute for a word; it usually occupies a short, five-syllable line and modifies a word, usually the first, in the next line. Some pillow-words are unclear in meaning; those whose meanings are known function rhetorically to raise the tone and to some degree also function as images.” So (by analogy) a pillow shot serves as a visual “nonsense-syllable” or non sequitur that creates a different expectation for the next scene." Martin Schneider, 2013,  Yasujiro Ozu and the enigmatic art of the pillow shot , in Dangerous Min...

  An Elephant Sitting Still - a Single Review (YouTube) 14'10" (Kinotherapy Movies) 27 dec 2024 "Hu Bo's only feature, "An Elephant Sitting Still" quickly resonated with film lovers worldwide and found it's place in the cinematic canon. This 4 hour intimate excursion through pain and suffering is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen and is an unequivocal masterpiece. Immersive cinematography and Buddhist philosophy elevate this film to a transcendent level along the ranks of Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fellini, Malick, Tarr, or Weerasethakul. It is undeniably heart-wrenching and gloomy, yet it is rewarding, honest, and an experience that will long escape your mind."

  Memoria: Time, Stasis, and Singularity (YouTube) 12'55" (Constantin Strother) 26 Dec 2024 A video essay exploring the connection between Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film, Memoria, and Ray Kurzweil's theory of the Singularity

  An Introduction to Tsai Ming-liang Walker Films and Slow Cinema (YouTube) 6'10" (Galvan) 15 june 2024

  Silence marocain : un voyage en slow cinema à travers le désert d’Agafay et l’Atlas (YouTube) 14'15' (CAMPBOXY) 28 dec 2024 "Découvrez le Maroc à travers l’objectif du slow cinema, inspiré par les récits poétiques de Béla Tarr et Carlos Reygadas. Ce voyage méditatif capture la beauté tranquille du désert d’Agafay, l’esprit intemporel des villages berbères et les majestueuses montagnes de l’Atlas. Avec des images contemplatives et des paysages sonores authentiques enregistrés sur place, ce film vous invite à vous immerger dans le rythme des paysages et de la culture marocains."