Slow cinema is a genre ofart cinema characterised by a style that isminimalist, observational, and with little or nonarrative, and which typically emphasizeslong takes.[1][2] It is sometimes calledcontemplative cinema.[3]
Practitioners of the genre includeAndrei Tarkovsky,Michelangelo Antonioni,Robert Bresson,Lav Diaz,Pedro Costa,Pier Paolo Pasolini,Aleksandr Sokurov,Béla Tarr,Chantal Akerman,Theo Angelopoulos andAbbas Kiarostami.[4][5]
Greek directorTheo Angelopoulos has been called an "icon of the so-called Slow Cinema movement".[6] Examples of the style includeBen Rivers'sTwo Years at Sea, Michelangelo Frammartino'sLe Quattro Volte, andShaun Wilson's51 Paintings.[2][7][8]
Recent underground film movements such asRemodernist film share the sensibility of slow or contemplative cinema.
G. Aravindan was a filmmaker whose works such asKanchana Sita,Thampu andEsthappan have been regarded as embodying a uniquely original style of contemplative cinema where the aesthetic sensibility and philosophical insights of Indian culture could find a meditative mode of expression within more universal contexts ofhumanism andtranscendentalism.[9][5][10]
TheAV Festival held a Slow Cinema Weekend at the Star and Shadow Cinema inNewcastle in March 2012, including the films of Rivers,Lav Diaz,Lisandro Alonso andFred Kelemen.[1][7][11][8]
Recent examples of slow cinema include films byKelly Reichardt,Bruno Dumont,Lucrecia Martel,Albert Serra,Apichatpong Weerasethakul,Bas Devos,Jia Zhangke,Pablo Stoll,Hou Hsiao-hsien,Edward Yang,Tsai Ming-Liang,Lav Diaz,Sergei Loznitsa,Carlos Reygadas,Benedek Fliegauf,Amat Escalante,Lisandro Alonso,Kim Ki-duk,Nuri Bilge Ceylan,Fernando Eimbcke,Sharunas Bartas,Scott Barley, andPedro Costa.[12][13][14]
Sources:[5][1][6][12][13][20][21][22]
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".[7]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."[1] The genre has been described as an "act of organized resistance" similar to theSlow food movement.[3]
Slow cinema has been criticized as indifferent or even hostile to audiences.[1] A backlash bySight & 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."[23]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."[24] Dan Fox ofFrieze criticized both the dichotomy of the argument into "philistine" vs "pretentious" and the reductiveness of the term "slow cinema".[25]
The American directorPaul Schrader wrote about slow cinema in his 1972 bookTranscendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, and called it an aesthetic tool. He argues that most viewers find slow cinema boring,[26] but that a "slow film director keeps his viewer on the hook, thinking there's a reward, a payoff just around the corner."[26]
Recently, film scholars Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour have written that the slow cinema movement's supporters and detractors have both mischaracterized it. As they argue, much "commentary posits slow cinema as a kind of pastoral for the present moment, a respite from our technologically saturated ... Hollywood-blockbuster-centered era." Such commentary therefore associates the movement with pleasure and relaxation. But in reality, slow cinema films often focus on down-and-out laborers; as Fusco and Seymour argue, "for those on the fringes of society, modernity is actually experienced as slowness, and usually to their great detriment."[27]
