Designing Calm (Sara Johnston)

 New addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema:

"This thesis explores Slow Cinema as a form of quiet resistance to contemporary cultures of acceleration through carefully designed mise-en-scène and sustained duration. As life is increasingly shaped by speed and efficiency, cinema has mirrored these changes implementing rapid editing and spectacle. Drawing primarily on Byung-Chul Han’s (2015) exploration of “burnout” provides a framework for understanding these changes. 

By situating this thesis within this cultural context, the research considers how slow cinema disrupts linear time and space and offers an alternative affective experience that encourages contemplation, relaxation and stillness as a response to the exhausting, pressurised current cultural condition.  

Through a visual analysis of Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) directed by Tsai Ming-liang, this thesis examines how production design creates interstitial spaces that function as temporal containers, allowing time to be layered, felt and experienced rather than simply passed through. It aims to approach slow cinema through three interrelated and combined analytical angles; time, space, and affect.  

The question of time is informed by Gilles Deleuze's concept of the “time image” (Deleuze, 1989b), complimented by the writings of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and his opinions on cinema’s unique connection to time (Tarkovsky, 1986).  

The analysis of space and mise-en-scène is drawn from Michel Foucault's theory of “heterotopias”: where multiple temporalities coexist and time is stretched within them to position space as the primary driver of meaning (Foucault, 1984). 

The exploration of affect is discussed through a broader cultural lens, using Han’s (2015) critique of contemporary acceleration, with further discussions from Andrei Tarkovsky and Paul Schrader. Together, these perspectives provide an analytical foundation for how slow cinema uses duration and production design to communicate embodied emotion, and how this fills a gap and works as a quiet response to contemporary, fast-paced culture. 

Ultimately, this thesis situates slow cinema within the broader cultural experience of acceleration, while acknowledging production designers’ role in facilitating cinematic resistance through carefully curated design. It demonstrates how slow cinema offers an alternative form of spectatorship that reshapes the present and gestures towards a future of cinematic slowness, emotional resonance and a resistance to burnout."

Sara Johnston; Designing Calm: Slow Cinema as an Act of Resistance. Temporal Experience and Spatial Design in an Accelerated Culture; Feb 2026