How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas | Manoush Zomorodi (TED Talk; April 2017; Vancouver BC) 16'
Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out and creativity.
What Is Duration? Understanding Slow Cinema Through KAILI BLUES
A video bricolage-essay by Ryan Swen (YouTube 29 May 2018) 9'15"
A mix between a straightforward video essay and a more abstract collage, this video briefly delves into the loose movement known as slow cinema, using the 2015 Chinese film KAILI BLUES, directed by Bi Gan, as a focusing lens. Equal emphasis is given to analysis and creation of a mood befitting the subject matter.
Source :
"Slow cinema" (ToBeContd) Zachary Lewis, Michael Sicinski (2014) [offline:accessible on Web Archive]
'Kaili Blues' Q&A | Bi Gan | New Directors/New Films 2016 (YouTube 33')
Director Bi Gan discussed his film 'Kaili Blues' after its screening at New Directors/New Films 2016, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. A multiple prizewinner at the Locarno Film Festival and one of the most audacious and innovative debuts of recent years, Bi Gan’s endlessly surprising shape-shifter comes to assume the uncanny quality of a waking dream as it poetically and mysteriously interweaves the past, present, and future. Chen Sheng, a country doctor in the Guizhou province who has served time in prison, is concerned for the well-being of his nephew, Weiwei, whom he believes his thug brother Crazy Face intends to sell. Weiwei soon vanishes, and Chen sets out to find him, embarking on a mystical quest that takes him to the riverside city of Kaili and the town of Dang Mai. Through a remarkable arsenal of stylistic techniques, the film develops into a one-of-a-kind road movie, at once magical and materialist, traversing both space and time. A Grasshopper Film release.
Quiet Mind - Introduction to Miksang and Contemplative Photography
Co-production Canada-Singapore. 2003. (11')
"Miksang is a Tibetan word meaning "good eye." It represents a form of contemplative photography based on the Dharma Art teachings of Chögyam Trungpa, in which the eye is in synchronisation with the contemplative mind. The result of this particular perception of the world, combined with photography, produces a peculiar and open way of seeing the world. Miksang pictures tend to bring the observer back into the original contemplation state of the author of the picture. The pictures can bring one back to a purer perception of reality that is often neglected. Miksang involves nothing fancy, no special setup; only a visual capture, in the proper state of mind, of everyday's reality" (Wikipedia)
Paul Schrader : "Tarkovsky's films mark a deviding point in the history of Durational Cinema. Before Tarkovsky, the use of withholding and distancing devices which Deleuze calls "Time Image", took place in the context of commercial theatrical cinema. Transcendental Style falls into this category.
After Tarkovsky the use of these devices became increasingly exagerated, and their films fell into the domain of film festivals and art museums. The 3 sec Bresson's shot of a door became a 10 min static view of traffic. Transcendental Style had morphed into the hydra-headed monster we call "Slow Cinema". Without going into length, I'd just say that Slow Cinema refers to films of considerable length where very little happens. [...] This is why I say it's outside the perview of commercial cinema. Cinema in my opinion is inherantly narrative."
Paul Schrader : "To me when movies move away from their narrative nucleus, they vector in one of three directions. And all three are dead endpoints. One is the Surveillance Camera, another is the Art Gallery and the third is the Mandala."
N.B. Thanks to Nadin Mai for posting Schrader's chart on Twitter.
