Unspoken Cinema

Opening sequence : A brief black screen with the sound of water nearby, so that the film starts by titillating our ears first with a calming, soothing tonality. The soundscape lingers as the screen opens, in black & white, on an embankment with the setting sun straight ahead. Two old people, backlit beautifully, are busy working ; one crouching over a bucket full of water and the other bending over an entangled fishing net. – Konnichi wa, says the cameraman off-screen as the old lady turns to the camera, and replies likewise. The film begins with a welcoming greeting (as we are casually introduced to who will become the two main characters of the film). In the foreground, the old lady calls for Wai-chan in the distance. But she soon adds he doesn’t hear well. Cut to the reverse shot, looking back at the lady, and slowly panning toward the legs of the old man who has sit in the shade of a shack. Tilt up, revealing his head, hidden under a cap. Close up of his face, e...

Opening Sequence   Up close, a white cat basking in the sun on the pier, then it walks off screen. Painterly framing of the Ushimado bay, with micro islands in the distance, and a tree branch striking the foreground of the frame top like a Japanese etching. Another view of the bay from higher ground, with the sea cluttered by oyster farms and a boat crossing at mid-screen. Now the camera is handheld onboard of a fisherman boat, looking in at an oyster rack approaching. It’s made of bamboos. Cut to a crane flying off of one of those racks. Face of the fisherman through the windshield of his driver cabin. The fisherman is walking on the bamboo rack without leash or safety gear, wearing a yellow vinyl overall finished with boots. Whip zoom on him crouching to untie one rope. Several shots of him retrieving the ropes. Back on the boat, the hydrolic crane is pulling out of the water a bunch of ropes tied together, revealing clustered oysters hugging the ropes as the ensembl...

See also at Unspoken Cinema: Lav DIAZ Runtimes (2026 updates) Comparative Duration in WISEMAN's oeuvre  (2023) Comparative Duration in WANG Bing's oeuvre  (2019) Lav Diaz Run Time  (2009) Lav DIAZ on Long Takes  (2008) Average Shot Length in CCC

See also at Unspoken Cinema: Lav DIAZ Runtimes (2026 updates) Comparative Duration in WISEMAN's oeuvre  (2023) Comparative Duration in Lav DIAZ's oeuvre  (2019) Lav Diaz Run Time  (2009) Average Shot Length in CCC

The IMAX of the 1890s | How to see the first movies (2019/Dave Kehr/MoMA) 11' Related : Louis Lumière (Rohmer/Renoir/Langlois) Les films Louis et Auguste Lumière 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12  (YouTube)

Flânerie 2.0 [ENG SUBS] from Chloé Galibert-Laîné on Vimeo . (11'13") 11 march 2018 Walter Benjamin (1938) La contemplation et la perception distraite Related : Propos sur la flânerie Flânerie urbaines sans parole  (EIKAWA Yuki)  Flânerie and (Post)Modernity: Links in memory of Anne Friedberg at Film Studies For Free “The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project” (Susan Buck-Morss, 1989) “Passagenwerk” / Arcades Project (Walter Benjamin)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Janos Kis (YouTube) 13'18" (2018/Janos Kis/Cambodia) There is a cow lounging on the side of a dirt road. Is it a sacred cow? This is not a postcard... the cow is ruminating patiently.  She whips her tail to chase away the flies, and shakes her large black ears. She is alone, abandonned on the side, at a distance in the frame. Not too estranged, not too familiar. The landscape is planted there for eternity. The road, although losely defined, with patches of grass here and there, is mostly sand, stretching perfectly in the axis of the shot. A symetrical composition only distracted by the excentric position of the cow and a huge tree on the opposite side of the road, as a counterbalance. And behind the cow, a power line with dancing posts that can't seem to keep a straight posture. The road has no end in sight it seems, as it unrolls up to the horizon, rigth into a perpendicular line of trees, which probably follows a perpendicular...

Building (2014/Arthur Caria/Brazil)1'58" This shot is not only Black & White, but devoid of greyscale as well. Strictly pure black and pure white. For the most part. We notice a shadow on the bottom right corner which divulges a possible video effect used to saturate the contrast to the max. With an odd canted angle this view could be a photograph of the Soviet Constructivism. The aesthetic is sublime. But it is very frontal. This scene is a black cardboard cutout (pure shadow) against a white background (pure light) as only a camera could see it. These minuscule silhouettes remind me of the fine paper cutting of one Lotte Reiniger ( The Adventures of Prince Ahmed /1926). But these stickmen aren't animation, this is real life. From a high vantage point we observe the last level of a building under construction, and a team of busy workers : 8 on top and a couple more on the lower levels (they are caged in a prison of wires). The handheld camera emphasizes the v...

Unheimlich (2015/Arthur CARIA/Brazil) 3'31" One take, one point of view, one subject, one continuous temporality.  It is difficult at first to figure out what is going on in this seemingly stolen shot from an overlooking window. A God's point of view. The  grainy light is gloomy and crepuscular. It is challenging to make out shapes from shadows, foreground from background, representations from reflections, impressions from illusions...  The curious high slant at an almost perfect 45° angle composes an eerily deceptive axonometric projection, which can revert inside-out the perspective depending on the viewer's inclination. Are we looking at a valley or a mountain fold? Is it a precipice or a wall? The shadows disappear on the edge, but is it because the shadows are projected down below at the bottom of the wall or is it a wall standing on the edge hiding the end of the shadows? Cars pass by furtively, with their headlights sweeping the scene from below....

REDOUBT (2019/Matthew Barney/USA) YouTube trailer (5'29")

 Elia Suleiman admitted being a fan of Jacques Tati. But also a fan of Roy Andersson's films and Tsai Ming-liang's films. Really interesting words on silence in his films too. It Must Be Heaven received a Special Mention at Cannes 2019. Elia Suleiman hadn't make a new film for 10 years since The Time That Remains (2009)