Unspoken Cinema

  The Don't Tell Show's: Top 5 Slow Cinema Feature Films on YouTube (YouTube) 3' (THE DON'T TELL SHOW) 11 Oct 2024 "Full Playlist here: Slow Cinema on Youtube "

  So You Want To Get Into...Tsai Ming-liang (YouTube) 16'17" (Dion Wyn) 1 March 2021

The Turin Horse (2011) Three Sisters (2012) Leviathan (2012) Our Daily Bread (2005) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) Le Quattro Volte (2010) An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) The Red Turtle (2016) Bovines (2011) Aquarela (2018) Perfect Days (2023) La libertad (2001) Drawing Restraint 9 (2005) Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002) Les Hommes (2006) Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) Honour of the Knights (2006) Oxhide II (2009) Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) At the First Breath of Wind (2002) Colossal Youth (2006) Blissfully Yours (2002) Resurrection (2025) Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003) Ranked by preference, here are the 25 greatest films of Contemplative Cinema from the last quarter of century (2001-2025) Find this list on my Letterboxd Have you seen them all yet? Please leave your Top10 or Top25 in the comments below if you so wish!

  All About Contemplation Cinema (YouTube) 6'12" (Missed Movies New Wave) 3 May 2026 "Contemplation Cinema is a curated screening initiative exploring slow, transcendental, reflective, and poetic films. It creates an intimate space for audiences to experience cinema beyond narrative focusing on stillness, time, and observation." Contemplation Cinema page  (Instagram)

  New addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "This article examines silence and stillness as central aesthetic strategies in contemporary slow cinema, exploring their capacity to evoke contemplation, resist narrative acceleration, and offer alternative temporal experiences in an era of media saturation. Drawing on Paul Schrader’s theory of transcendental style, with its progression from everyday realism to decisive stasis (2018), Ira Jaffe’s conceptualization of slow movies as an existential counter to the spectacle-driven “cinema of action” through curtailed motion and spatiotemporal vacancy (2014), and Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge’s plural, global framing of slow cinema’s challenge to instrumentalized time (2016), the study employs a transcultural comparative approach. Through the interpretive lens of Emersonian Transcendentalism, American filmmakers Terrence Malick, Paul Schrader, and Kelly Reichardt deploy silence as a site of individual spiritual trial, et...

  CON (Mainstream) PRO (Contemplative Cinema) Expository Dialogue Discreet Body Language Serendipity Happenstance Real Life Minutiae Efficient Editing Patient Observation Manipulative Score Authentic Soundscape Stereotypical Mechanics Ambiguity Preservation Fabricated Dramaturgy Ordinary Agency Stressful Excitement Mindful Presence to the World Read also at Unspoken Cinema: Convenience vs Contemplation (Cinematic tropes)

  The Film That Fixes Your Attention Span (YouTube) 19'56" (Cinema To The Max) 20 March 2026 "Topology of Sirens is a film that uses ambient music to recontextualize our narrative-centric filmmaking perceptions. By utilizing techniques commonly found in slow cinema, director Jonathan Davies' crafts an experience that rewards different mode of attention. This is the second installment of "The Ambient Cinema Canon", an ongoing series on my channel where we discuss the genre's connections to experimental/avant-garde film theory."

Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema:  "To conclude, I have highlighted that cinematic slowness does not exclusively entail the kind of challenging, laborious mode of deep attention that critics and popular imagination have predominantly associated with slow cinema. By contrast, participants have foregrounded a pleasurable, effortless form of attention akin to a trance-like flow. Letting go enables a degree of freedom to look, think, and feel. However, viewers do also actively pay attention and attune to the film in a mode of deep viewing. So, cinematic slowness provokes a variety or spectrum of responses. [..] Consequently, this enhanced understanding of forms of attentional engagement complicates and nuances an overly simplified understanding of spectatorship in terms of the binary opposition between attention and distraction, between activity and passivity, and fast and slow. A substantial part of the body of film theory from the second half of the previous c...

Laïla Pakalnina – Entretien #1 – Cadrer le mouvement de la vie - Les entretiens Balises (YouTube) 13'04" (Bibliothèque Publique d'Information) 16 février 2026 "Dans un entretien filmé accordé à Balises, Laïla Pakalnina (Lettonie/Latvia) explique que, selon elle, les plans fixes sont animés par des mouvements propres à la composition dans le cadre, au rythme donné par le montage et à la vie elle-même, captée par la caméra.   Ses choix esthétiques répondent ainsi à une nécessité d’être à l’écoute et à l'affût de ce qui advient dans un environnement donné, près d’une cascade ( Chute d’eau , 2016), sous un pont ( Le Premier pont , 2020), dans une usine de fabrication de cuillères en plastique ( La Cuillère , 2019) ou à un arrêt de bus ( Terminus , 2024)."  Cet entretien a été enregistré au Centre Pompidou le 10 janvier 2026, en partenariat avec l'université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

  "a celebration of the art and philosophy of slow cinema" https://www.facebook.com/mindanaoslow/

We have reached (and passed) the bar of 500 films listed on the Recommended Contemplative Cinema page ! Since 1960, the first ever Contemplative film recorded in the database: Naked Island , to Laguna , the latest Sharunas Bartas film of 2025, film #500 on the list. In 65 years, this accounts for an average of 7.7 films per year. But these days, it's more like 25 per year. Since last year, the list can be browsed at my Letterboxd .

In this illuminating exchange, UNSPOKEN CINEMA interviews Joshua Polanski ( There Were No Gods Left ), a scholar and critic whose background in the academic study of religion and political theology provides a unique lens for examining the contemplative world of "slow cinema". As the organizer of the online guided film club "Discursions in Time: Slow and Poetic Cinema(s)," ( See program here ) Polanski argues that slowness is not a monolith but a diverse practice holding multitudes—from the decolonial "Malay time" of Lav Diaz to the stark materialism of Wang Bing. The discussion traverses Polanski's personal history, including his shared academic roots with Paul Schrader at Calvin College, while pivoting toward his specialized passion for the "Baltic Soul." He provides a compelling defense of the cinema of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, highlighting how these regions used poetic documentary and formal experimentation as a form of quiet rebell...

Photo: Evolution of a filipino Family (2004/Lav DIAZ) "In this guided film club, we will explore the world of slow cinema(s) from the Lumière brothers through the early 2020s. We will hold each other accountable as we finally work through mammoth runtimes on films like Lav Diaz’s Evolution of a Filipino Family (10 hours and 43 minutes). We will learn together and from each other about diverse cinema traditions and filmmakers. And we will even debate whether or not there even is even an identifiable movement or aesthetic that we can accurately call “slow cinema.”  Each meeting will have recommended (not required) short readings, optional viewings, and required viewings. All films will be reasonably accessible to view from home at free or low costs. Each group meeting will be scheduled for 90 minutes over Google Meet."  Discursions in Time: Slow and Poetic Cinema(s) — A Guided Film Club (There Were No Gods Left) Program (March 8th - May 31st 2026) Meeting 1: Short(s) Introdu...

Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "This two-volume work explores a static long take, termed a still Einstellung, as well as coexistent still and moving imagery by Lumière, Welles and the MPEG compression codec, to contemplate the kind of image it generates. Jon Inge Faldalen's volumes are a theoretical exploration of the concept of Einstellung. The author keeps the original German term, capitalizing on the ambiguity inherent in this type of image phenomenon; in this case, the long take, or at least a continuous unbroken take, effected by an immobile camera whose captured content could potentially contain perceptible movements produced by entities within the composition framed. The author embraces neologisms in order to capture specific aesthetic-technical phenomena more accurately than has hitherto been possible. Stillmoving I is a theoretical exploration of the concept of Einstellung. The author asks whether this image is a still image, or a moving imag...

  TALLER-RESIDENCIA SLOW CINEMA con Jiajie Yu Yan. Del 20 al 28 de Febrero de 2026 (IbizaCineFest) PDF  ESPAÑOL "Este taller está diseñado para cualquier persona que tenga un interés por desarrollar una mirada propia y un estilo personal, en volver a la esencia del cine a partir del lenguaje cinematográfico y el hecho fílmico, más allá de la trama o el guion. Este taller se centra en un cine contemplativo y reflexivo, focalizado en el poder de la imagen y el sonido. Está dirigido a estudiantes de arte, cine, fotografía, audiovisual, amantes del cine y la fotografía, y profesionales y artistas con inquietudes e interés por desarrollar nuevas formas de expresión del lenguaje cinematográfico." * * * 2nd Workshop on Slow Cinema with Jiajie Yu Yan. From 20 to 28 February 2026 ENGLISH: "This workshop is designed for anyone interested in developing their own unique vision and personal style by returning to the essence of cinema—rooted in cinematographic language and the filmic...

Comme le Cinéma Contemplatif n'est pas monolithique, il s'agit de distinguer (ou défricher) les différents courants à l'intérieur même du tronc commun des auteurs majeurs qui le composent. Exclus, mais dont l'influence est présente, les précurseurs du mode Contemplatif (en gris, tout en bas) définissent aussi bien un point de départ qu'un faisceau de veines formelles à l'esthétiques typique. De Yasujiro Ozu (période tardive) à Maya Deren, en passant par Bresson, Tarkovski et Tati... mais surtout les frères Lumière, des racines lointaines, provenant du cinéma muet, néoréaliste ou du cinéma moderne. Au milieu de ce faisceau réside le cœur proprement documentaire du Cinéma Contemplatif, issu de Lumière et Warhol. Deux veines centrales, "Immanent" & "Installation", qui scindent déjà le dit "documentaire" en deux versants, l'un humaniste et immédiat (à gauche), la surveillance chaude, ce sont Wang Bing et Sergei Loznitsa, (initié...

 Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "(English abstract) The so-called «Subtractive Cinema» (Antony Fiant 2014) encompasses a trend in Contemporary Cinema that reduces story, dialogue, and the number of shots to a minimum. Among its most recognizable directors are Chantal Akerman, Béla Tarr, and Wang Bing. In this style, shots appear with more autonomy than in Classical Cinema and are connected more by mental associations than spatial continuity. Fiant observes that this cinematic mode inherits what Deleuze (1987a) called the «Time-Image,» so we will use his notions of relative and absolute offscreen images to understand how the shots are organized and what they leave out. And although this trend comes after the Time-Image, subtractive cinema revives the aesthetics of Early Cinema, which we call the «Matter-Image.» The examples we will use are the films of Pedro Costa, particularly Cavalo Dinheiro (2014) and Vitalina Varela (2019), and those of Apichatpong Wee...

  In 2018, Paul Schrader published a map for Durational Cinema at large ( see his original diagram here ), and in particular for what he theorized in 1972 (Transcendental Style in Film), i.e. spiritual cinema around Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer. I produced a counter map for Durational Cinema here , also in 2018. Today, this illustration represents the Venn diagram of TSF (Transcendental Style in Film) and Durational Cinema (as seen by Schrader) crossed with the filmmakers promoted on this blog (CCC = Contemporary Contemplative Cinema) We notice that only 4 auteurs (Akerman, Kiarostami, Sokurov and Gus "Death Trilogy" Van Sant) are both considered TSF and CCC. The rest is out of bound (beyond the Tarkovsky ring, see his map) in grey against purple background, or ignored completely (in white against purple) See also the Slow Cinemas v. CCC Venn diagram here

  What Slow Films Teach Us About Life (YouTube) 4'17" (Liminal Movie Project) 26 Oct 2025 "In a world of speed and distraction, slow cinema dares to take its time, to let life unfurl at its natural rhythm. From Tarkovsky’s long takes to Chantal Akerman’s stasis, from Béla Tarr’s endless rain to Wong Kar-wai’s yearning pauses — these directors are asking us not to see time pass but to feel it unfold. This essay examines how slow cinema transforms silence into emotion, stasis into animation, boredom into revelation. This outburst isn’t about story — it’s about presence. About the bits between the bits that give life its cinematic quality. If you’ve ever been told that “nothing happens” in a movie, this video is for you."

  The Art of Slow Filmmaking : How to make a masterpiece gracefully (YouTube) 13'26" (Cinora) 7 Nov 2025 "Instead of racing through production, how would it look if we took filmmaking at a graceful pace, intentionally?"