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Slow cinema
Slow cinema (sometimes called contemplative cinema) is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist and observational, with frequent use of long takes, emphasis on extended duration, and sparse narrative elements. Films in this style frequently use minimal dialogue and nonprofessional actors. The term first came into use among cinephile communities during the 21st century, although early examples of the style date back to the postwar era.
Works of slow cinema have been said to commonly feature the following characteristics:
The roots of slow cinema lie in postwar era trends such as the Italian neorealist movement, with its emphasis on observation. According to the British Film Institute, the genre's "ancestors" included Italian filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica as well as Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson have also been identified as precursors. Antonioni has often been characterized as the "first master" of the approach, with his depictions of alienated industrial modernity extending duration beyond what was required for the narrative. The minimalist 1960s "anti-films" of pop artist Andy Warhol, such as Empire (1965), and Chantal Akerman's 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) were also influential on the style.
In the 1990s, the approach of slow cinema became more prominent across the globe and saw increased focus on sustained durations. Directors such as Béla Tarr, Lav Diaz, Tsai Ming-liang, and Pedro Costa came to prominence within this tradition. Tarr's seven-hour 1994 film Sátántangó became representative of the movement. In the 2010s, slow cinema works saw critical acclaim and award recognition, including Semih Kaplanoglu's Honey and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). The style reached large American audiences via Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011).
The AV Festival held a Slow Cinema Weekend at Newcastle's Star and Shadow Cinema in 2012, including the films of Ben Rivers, Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso, and Fred Kelemen.
The first usage of the term "slow cinema" was likely by critic Jonathan Ramsey in reference to Tsai Ming-liang's 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn. That year, critic Michel Clement used the phrase "cinema of slowness" to refer to films by Tsai, Béla Tarr, and Abbas Kiarostami. In 2008, Matthew Flannigan took up the concept in the influential essay "Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema", which identified some of the basic qualities of the slow cinema style. By the 2010s, the term had begun to catch on among Anglo-Saxon film communities, inspiring writing in Sight & Sound such as Nick James's controversial article "Passive-Aggressive", which questioned the merits of the style and prompted much debate.
Sight & Sound noted of the definition of slow cinema that "The length of a shot, on which much of the debate revolves, is a quite abstract measure if divorced from what takes place within it". The Guardian contrasted the long takes of the genre with the two-second average shot length in Hollywood action movies, and noted that "they opt for ambient noises or field recordings rather than bombastic sound design, embrace subdued visual schemes that require the viewer's eye to do more work, and evoke a sense of mystery that springs from the landscapes and local customs they depict more than it does from generic convention." The genre has been described as an "act of organized resistance" similar to the Slow food movement.
Slow cinema has been criticized as indifferent or even hostile to audiences. A backlash by Sight & Sound's Nick James, and picked up by online writers, argued that early uses of long takes were "adventurous provocations created by extremists", whereas recent films are "operating within a recognized, default artistic idiom." In 2007, Steven Shapiro criticized the modern trend as backward-looking and nostalgic. The Guardian's film blog concluded that "being less overweeningly precious about films that are likely to be impenetrable to even the most well-informed audiences would seem an idea." Dan Fox of Frieze criticized both the dichotomy of the argument into "philistine" vs "pretentious" and the reductiveness of the term "slow cinema".
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Slow cinema
Slow cinema (sometimes called contemplative cinema) is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist and observational, with frequent use of long takes, emphasis on extended duration, and sparse narrative elements. Films in this style frequently use minimal dialogue and nonprofessional actors. The term first came into use among cinephile communities during the 21st century, although early examples of the style date back to the postwar era.
Works of slow cinema have been said to commonly feature the following characteristics:
The roots of slow cinema lie in postwar era trends such as the Italian neorealist movement, with its emphasis on observation. According to the British Film Institute, the genre's "ancestors" included Italian filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica as well as Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson have also been identified as precursors. Antonioni has often been characterized as the "first master" of the approach, with his depictions of alienated industrial modernity extending duration beyond what was required for the narrative. The minimalist 1960s "anti-films" of pop artist Andy Warhol, such as Empire (1965), and Chantal Akerman's 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) were also influential on the style.
In the 1990s, the approach of slow cinema became more prominent across the globe and saw increased focus on sustained durations. Directors such as Béla Tarr, Lav Diaz, Tsai Ming-liang, and Pedro Costa came to prominence within this tradition. Tarr's seven-hour 1994 film Sátántangó became representative of the movement. In the 2010s, slow cinema works saw critical acclaim and award recognition, including Semih Kaplanoglu's Honey and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). The style reached large American audiences via Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011).
The AV Festival held a Slow Cinema Weekend at Newcastle's Star and Shadow Cinema in 2012, including the films of Ben Rivers, Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso, and Fred Kelemen.
The first usage of the term "slow cinema" was likely by critic Jonathan Ramsey in reference to Tsai Ming-liang's 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn. That year, critic Michel Clement used the phrase "cinema of slowness" to refer to films by Tsai, Béla Tarr, and Abbas Kiarostami. In 2008, Matthew Flannigan took up the concept in the influential essay "Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema", which identified some of the basic qualities of the slow cinema style. By the 2010s, the term had begun to catch on among Anglo-Saxon film communities, inspiring writing in Sight & Sound such as Nick James's controversial article "Passive-Aggressive", which questioned the merits of the style and prompted much debate.
Sight & Sound noted of the definition of slow cinema that "The length of a shot, on which much of the debate revolves, is a quite abstract measure if divorced from what takes place within it". The Guardian contrasted the long takes of the genre with the two-second average shot length in Hollywood action movies, and noted that "they opt for ambient noises or field recordings rather than bombastic sound design, embrace subdued visual schemes that require the viewer's eye to do more work, and evoke a sense of mystery that springs from the landscapes and local customs they depict more than it does from generic convention." The genre has been described as an "act of organized resistance" similar to the Slow food movement.
Slow cinema has been criticized as indifferent or even hostile to audiences. A backlash by Sight & Sound's Nick James, and picked up by online writers, argued that early uses of long takes were "adventurous provocations created by extremists", whereas recent films are "operating within a recognized, default artistic idiom." In 2007, Steven Shapiro criticized the modern trend as backward-looking and nostalgic. The Guardian's film blog concluded that "being less overweeningly precious about films that are likely to be impenetrable to even the most well-informed audiences would seem an idea." Dan Fox of Frieze criticized both the dichotomy of the argument into "philistine" vs "pretentious" and the reductiveness of the term "slow cinema".