Long Take and Defamiliarization (Xu)
Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema:
The effort to introduce defamiliarization in slow cinema is triggered by the fact that the viewer finds it unattractive to watch something familiar on the screen. As mentioned earlier, according to Bazin, the aim of long-take photography is to preserve the spatial-temporal continuum so that the viewers are involved as much as possible as the duration of the long take is synchronized to the real-time that the viewer is experiencing. However, in practice, an average viewer may be either unable or unwilling to have her real-time experience to be synchronized. [..]"
"Even though slow cinema intends to have the audience attend to all the details of real life, it by no means tries to submerge the viewer within its mundaneness of it. Just the opposite, it tries to defamiliarize the audience with the images of life they experience. The perspective shaped by the long take fixes the viewer in a designated spot, at which the viewer becomes a bystander and gazer of other people’s life, since this kind of gaze is rare in real life.
Comments