Unspoken Cinema

  Abbas Kiarostami: the Art of Living (2003) (YouTube) 58'41' (Fergus Daly) 8 nov 2023 Essay by Fergus Daly on Kiarostami here  : "The Mirror of Possible Worlds" (1998, Film West 32 ) Companion piece : The Mirror of Possible Worlds: Kiarostami on Aran (YouTube) 24'05" (Fergus Daly) 31 march 2026 "20 years on, an experimental reimagining of Abbas Kiarostami’s experience of the Aran Islands when he travelled there in July 2001 following in the footsteps of Robert Flaherty and his 1934 film Man of Aran. Part film essay, part fictional reverie, The Mirror of Possible Worlds explores the effect of Place on creative thinking and the situation of the exiled artist in his encounter with a dispossessed land. As Nicole Brenez has written of the film: "The supremely minimalist and elegant « Mirror of Possible Worlds » achieves one of the deepest meditations about the image in contemporary cinema, rising winds of ideas blowing directly from the barren plains ...

The old man (Venkatesan) 8th Street (2026/Abdul RAHMAN/India) 1h Film review by Benoit Rouilly for Unspoken Cinema (containing spoilers voluntarily). A clean, well directed piece by Abdul Rahman, who in just one contemplative hour and three cryptic chapters, evokes the devious outlines of five mysterious stories within four opaque characters… Some stories will remain unresolved as others stand open-ended. Everything takes place, practically in real time around 2am, in a single night-bar, named “8th Street”. A lovely place, with marble pedestal tables, wooden chairs and comfy booths. There are rounded corners to the door-frames like on a boat. Coffee bean wooden patterns form a see through ceiling. And a neo-classical sepia painting on the back wall, representing customers at coffee tables, completes the atmosphere. The protagonist enters the bar last, a clean, well lighted place, and penetrates by the front door this “huis-clos” (=a single action takes place in a single space behind c...

Latest addition to the Library page at Unspoken Cinema: "This article examines how Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) creates sacred experience through systematic absence within contemporary slow cinema aesthetics. While previous scholarship has focused on religious content in spiritual cinema, this analysis demonstrates how formal techniques—particularly strategic concealment and extended duration—generate contemplative states without explicit religious references. Drawing on Paul Schrader’s transcendental style theory and recent slow cinema scholarship, the article traces how Kiarostami adapts Persian poetic traditions, particularly concepts of pardeh (veiling) and the interplay between bāṭin (hidden) and ẓāhir (manifest), to create meaning through what remains unseen. The dying woman who never appears, the acousmatic voices of invisible characters, and the village spaces kept off-screen transform absence from lack into generative force. Through comparative analys...

  Doors and Windows of Abbas Kiarostami (YouTube) 4'19" (In the mood for film) 22 apr 2026   "A quiet study of doors and windows as they appear across the films of Abbas Kiarostami. These openings are not treated as objects, but as positions—places where seeing becomes uncertain, and where distance begins to shape meaning. Characters pause near thresholds, look through glass, move alongside frames that never fully reveal what lies beyond them. The video follows this repetition: doorways that hesitate, windows that filter, spaces that remain slightly out of reach. What emerges is not a narrative, but a way of looking—one that accepts incompleteness, distance, and the quiet presence of time passing. Nothing here resolves. Everything remains at the edge."

"This article examines how Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) creates sacred experience through systematic absence within contemporary slow cinema aesthetics. While previous scholarship has focused on religious content in spiritual cinema, this analysis demonstrates how formal techniques—particularly strategic concealment and extended duration—generate contemplative states without explicit religious references. Drawing on Paul Schrader’s transcendental style theory and recent slow cinema scholarship, the article traces how Kiarostami adapts Persian poetic traditions, particularly concepts of pardeh (veiling) and the interplay between bāṭin (hidden) and ẓāhir (manifest), to create meaning through what remains unseen. The dying woman who never appears, the acousmatic voices of invisible characters, and the village spaces kept off-screen transform absence from lack into generative force. Through comparative analysis with international slow cinema practitioners like Bél...

  The Aesthetic Features of Slow Cinema - FILM301 - Jono Li - Video Essay (2023)  (TOASTEN) 17 Oct 2023 (YouTube) 4'47"

  Slow Cinema (YouTube) 5'16" Video Essay (Annabel Greig) 25 may 2018

Expanded to 20 spots, since my last Top10 Canon in 2012 , because the population of CCC has grown "exponentially", reaching over 350 films (as registered in my CCC Recommendations )... here is an updated Contemporary Contemplative Cinema Canon, based on my viewing experience and my own criteria, featuring its greatest aesthetic achievements to date :  My Top20 CCC Canon  (2022 Updated) Sátántangó  (1994/TARR Béla Tarr/Hungary) Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles  (1975/Chantal AKERMAN/Belgium) Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks  (2003/WANG Bing/China) The Turin Horse   (2011/TARR Béla/Hungary) Le Moindre Geste  (1971/DELIGNY/MANENTI/FR) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone  (2006/TSAI/Taiwan)  Los Muertos  (2004/ALONSO/Argentina)  Leviathan  (2012/CASTAING-TAYLOR, PARAVEL/FR-USA-UK) DOC Blissfully Yours   (2002/WEERASETHAKUL/Thailand) An Elephant Sitting Still  (2018/HU Bo...

 Dead Time - Exploring Slow Cinema (Nich PK) video essay ( YouTube ) 19'14"  27 August 2022 See also at Unspoken Cinema : CCC Videographic Criticism

  After a year without audience, the Festival des 3 continents is back in public, in theatres, in Nantes, between the 19th and the 28th of november 2021 ! And I will attend this year's edition. Last year won, ex-aequo, for the Mongolfière d'or, both : 精神０ ( Seishin 0) / Zero / Professeur Yamamoto (2020/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan) 남매의 여름밤 / Moving On (2019/YOON Dan-bi/South Korea) And they will both be projected on Sunday 28th of november. In the lineup, many contemplative gems are featured : TSAI Ming-liang's Days Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL's Blissfully Yours Whisky by Juan Pablo REBELLA & Pablo STOLL Alamar by Pedro GONZALEZ-RUBIO La vie sur terre by Abderrahmane SISSAKO Mysterious Object At Noon by WEERASETHAKUL And Life Goes On by Abbas KIAROSTAMI Tug by Jon LAZAM A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces by ZHU Shengze (DOCU) Pedro by Natesh HEGDE Follow the round tables and news on their YouTube channel . * * * My reviews from the festival at Unspoken Cinema : La...

Films made by 22 recurrent Contemporary Contemplative Cinema figureheads since 1967 [ Google sheet ] It's time to update the CCC timeline 2008 , I hastly put together 12 years ago, at the origin of this blog. I had omitted back then Peter Hutton, Franco Piavoli, Tacita Dean, Elia Suleiman, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Sergei Loznitsa & Kazuhiro Soda, who I didn't know, as well as most of James Benning's output. But a few also don't make the cut this time around (Omirbaev, Kore-eda, Costa, Ceylan, JZK, GVS, Martin, Escalante, Serra) for various reasons (too few CCC films, too "speechy"/narrative in comparison to the other main figureheads, but it doesn't mean they are not contemplative, just they are not part of the chosen few CCC role models)... in order to paint a clear picture, more radical, of this new narrative cohort. One thing did change : the year of debut of this narrative mode, now 1967 instead of 1970. In restrospect, we can see clearly now the years...

Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) 1940-2016 Master of Contemporary Contemplative Cinema Drawing by Benoit Rouilly

Fireflies is a print magazine, a beautifully crafted book, published between Berlin and Melbourne by founders Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini Camia: (...) Each issue assembles an international group of writers and visual artists to celebrate the work of two extraordinary filmmakers through personal essays, interviews and creative responses. (...) We print responses to cinema that are personal, daring and that wouldn’t necessarily be found in other film journals­: short fiction, visual art, poetry, memoir, comics, and creative non-fiction that experiments with multiple forms. (...) What is interesting to Unspoken Cinema is the filmmakers they chose, always by pair, are familiar with the list of CCC filmmakers : Issue #1 : Pasolini / Apichatpong Weerasethakul  (out of print) Issue #2 : Kiarostami / Tarr  (out of print) Issue #3 : Claire Denis / Jia Zhangke Issue #4 : Pedro Costa / Ben Rivers Issue #5 : Angela Schanelec / Agnès Varda

Abbas KIAROSTAMI : "Ce qui me touche beaucoup dans le cinéma d'Ozu, ce sont évidemment ces plan fixes, larges, qui font de l'écran de cinéma une scène de théatre où le spectateur a toute liberté de poser son regard, de chercher ce qui l'intéresse sur un plan. C'est ce respect pour le spectateur, cette foi en l'intelligence et au libre arbitre du spectateur, est quelque chose pour laquelle j'ai effectivement beaucoup d'amiration, et qui selon moi manque beaucoup dans le cinéma d'aujourd'hui. Chercher à imposer au spectateur ce qu'il doit voir, ce qu'il doit ressentir, est quelque chose à quoi je ne peux pas adhérer. Je crois que la discretion est la différence de sa caméra, le fait de la poser loin, sur un petit pied, et le fait de dire au spectateur : 'je ne suis pas là en tant que réalisateur, ce regard n'est pas le mien mais le votre' fait preuve d'une grande noblesse, d'un grand homme, et moi je ne peux qu'êt...

LE CREUSET DES CONTEMPLATIFS Michelangelo Frammartino : "Dans le Quattro Volte , il n’y a pas de référent cinématographique direct. Cependant, je me suis souvent inspiré de l’oeuvre de certains grands cinéastes. Le premier qui me vient à l’esprit serait Béla Tarr. Dans son cinéma, la présence des animaux est essentielle. Damnation est selon moi l’histoire d’un homme qui se transforme en chien. Je pense souvent aussi à Bresson et à Au hasard Balthazar . J’aime le fait que les auteurs arrivent au cinéma en passant par d’autres portes, par d’autres arts. J’admire Michael Snow et son film La région centrale. Il y a aussi Samuel Beckett, qui a écrit un seul film, un court-métrage intitulé Film , et qui a été tourné par Alain Schneider en 1965. Dans les deux cas, il s’agit d’expérimenter avec un point de vue où l’homme n’est plus la figure centrale et où la machine est le dispositif d’enregistrement qui regarde. Ce sont là des grands exemples. Mon travail est plutôt artisanal. Les gran...

It’s been long since Abbas Kiarostami started trying to eliminate the role of the director in making films. His works bear witness to the fact that, with him, the function of a director is closer to that of a concept artist than a logistic manager. His latest, Shirin (2008), is the next logical step in this process of progressive non-intervention of director. An extrapolation of his segment Where is My Romeo? (which seems like a experimental doodle in comparison) in To Each His Own Cinema (2007), Shirin presents us an audience in a movie theatre, made up mostly of women, played wonderfully by over a hundred professional actresses, watching a period melodrama based on the love triangle between king Khosrow, princess Shirin of Armenia and Farhad, the ace mathematician and sculptor. No, we do not get to watch one frame of the film that is playing in the theatre. Instead, what we get is a film whose imagery is constructed entirely using close-ups of the audience’s reaction to the movie th...

Spot the differences : Meditation "A spectacular colorful sunset with all natural sound from the Virgin Islands: Virgin Gorda, BVI and the world famous 'THE BATHS' beach. This shot is taken from our 'Caribbean Daydreams with 6 loopable scenes' DVD" Contemplation Abbas Kiarostami on the making of Five dedicated to Ozu (2003): "[..]The second method is simpler, but also more complex. This is very different from the cinematic approach, which involves the cooperation of several technicians and different people with different skills. This is a writing job and does not need a crew. One or two companions are enough. For this way of working, you need the earth, wind and water to cooperate. You need a tail wind. You need a good wave. As backgammon players say: 'It's how the dice fall that counts.' [..] I cannot deny the role of this hidden pattern - the role of accident - the occurence or the power of destiny, neighter in my personal life, nor in my w...

Faces, faces of beautiful, sensible, excitedly moved women fill the film of Kiarostami , unveiling their deepest sensations, exposing unabashedly their compassion with the heroes, under their veiled head. They are living through the love story of an ancient-classical epic, a melodrama, written by the Iranian poet, Nezami, 800 years ago, in which passion, desire, divorce and death occur to the bitter end. And they follow these trials with total empathy, identifying with the protagonists’ suffering and joy – without ever seeing a moment of the events. If there exists radical, defying, yet mostly efficient evocation of nude human emotions on the screen, Kiarostami dared to venture into this extreme simplicity. He deliberately omitted everything that could be considered as “illustration” or plain visible explanation. Instead we have allusion, fine signals through the sound and spoken text in order to justify the impact, the events that call for reactions. "The actresses were looking...

What would cinema be without Abbas Kiarostami? Watching his films is a process of unlearning cinematic conventions and relearning the humanity within. He has time and again proved that the audience can be emotionally stimulated and for the right reason, without ever engaging them in the film. The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) is a testament why he never sacrifices Kiarostami the humanist for Kiarostami the filmmaker. The moral questions – of choices, of priorities and of conscience – which the film presents seem pertinent now, in these tough times, more than ever. I can guarantee that one ready to confront them would have understood him(her)self better at the end of it all. All it takes is a little patience and a willingness to introspect after the film has ended. More than the apparent issue of communication and the lack of it, The Wind Will Carry Us seeks to question the definition of communication. Sure, the protagonist Behzad (played to perfection by Behzad Dorani) does have a cellular...