Slow Cinema
Edited by Tiago de Luca, Nuno Barradas Jorge
Situates, theorises and maps out cinematic slowness within contemporary global film production and across world cinema history
In the context of a frantic world that celebrates instantaneity and speed, a number of cinemas steeped in contemplation, silence and duration have garnered significant critical attention in recent years, thus resonating with a larger sociocultural movement whose aim is to rescue extended temporal structures from the accelerated tempo of late-capitalism. Although not part of a structured film movement, directors such as Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang, Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa and Kelly Reichardt have been largely subsumed under the term ‘slow cinema’. But what exactly is slow cinema? Is it a strictly recent phenomenon or an overarching cinematic tradition? And how exactly do slow cinemas interrelate on an aesthetic, technical and political level?
Deploying the concept of slowness as an umbrella category under which filmmakers and traditions from different historical and geographical backgrounds can fruitfully converge, this innovative collection of essays interrogates and expands the frameworks that have generally informed slow cinema debates. Repositioning the term in a broader theoretical space, the book combines an array of fine-grained studies that will provide valuable insight into the notion of slowness in the cinema, while mapping out past and contemporary slow films across the globe.
Key features- Establishes the significance of slow cinema studies in film scholarship
- Illuminates the interconnectedness of past and present-day world cinemas through the methodological and comparative prism of slowness
- Provides in-depth critical analyses of a wide variety of world cinema traditions and practices
- Intervenes in, and contributes to, key debates in current film scholarship: new technologies, art cinema, realism
- Martin Brady teaches in the German and Film Studies Departments at King’s College London
- William Brown is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London
- Paul Cooke is Professor of German Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds
- Glyn Davis is Chancellor’s Fellow and Reader in Screen Studies at the University of Edinburgh
- Elena Gorfinkel is Assistant Professor of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Michael Gott is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches courses in French and Francophone literature and cinema, European Studies, and film
- Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor of Visual Culture at the University of Bergen, where he is also founding director of the Nomadikon Center for Visual Culture
- Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter
- Stephanie Lam is a PhD candidate in the Film and Visual Studies program at Harvard University
- Philippa Lovatt is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Stirling and also teaches at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City
- Cecília Mello is Lecturer in Film Studies in the Department of Film, Radio and Television, University of São Paulo, and FAPESP Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art, Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil
- Matilda Mroz is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Greenwich
- Lúcia Nagib is Professor of Film at the University of Reading
- Jacques Rancière is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris (St. Denis)
- Justin Remes is an assistant professor of film studies at Iowa State University
- Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam
- Karl Schoonover is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick
- Patrick Brian Smith is a Frederick H. Lowy Doctoral Fellow in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University
- Rob Stone is Professor of European Film at the University of Birmingham and Director of B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies
- Julian Stringer is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK
- C. Claire Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Film at UCL
- Michael Walsh is Associate Professor, University of Hartford
Table Of Contents
Illustrations
Foreword, Julian Stringer
Introduction: From Slow Cinema to Slow Cinemas, Tiago De Luca & Nuno Barradas Jorge
Part I: Historicising Slow Cinema
1: The Politics of Slowness and the Traps of Modernity, Lúcia Nagib
2: The Slow Pulse of the Era: Carl Th. Dreyer’s Film Style, C. Claire Thomson
3: The First Durational Cinema and the Real of Time, Michael Walsh
4: ‘The Attitude of Smoking and Observing’: Slow Film and Politics in the Cinema Of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Martin Brady
Part II: Contextualising Slow Cinema
5: Temporal Aesthetics of Drifting: Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness, Song Hwee Lim
6: Stills and Stillness in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema, Glyn Davis
7: Melancholia: The Long, Slow Cinema of Lav Diaz, William Brown
8: Exhausted Drift: Austerity, Dispossession and the Politics of Slow in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, Elena Gorfinkel
9: If These Walls Could Speak: From Slowness to Stillness in the Cinema of Jia Zhangke, Cecília Mello
Part III: Slow Cinema And Labour
10: Wastrels of Time: Slow Cinema’s Labouring Body, The Political Spectator, and the Queer, Karl Schoonover
11: Living Daily, Working Slowly: Pedro Costa’s in Vanda’s Room, Nuno Barradas Jorge
12: Working/Slow: Cinematic Style as Labour in Wang Bing’s Tie Xi Qu: West Of The Tracks, Patrick Brian Smith
13: ‘Slow Sounds’: Duration, Audition and Labour in Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide and Oxhide II, Philippa Lovatt
Part IV: Slow Cinema and the Nonhuman
14: It’s About Time: Slow Aesthetics in Experimental Ecocinema and Nature Cam Videos, Stephanie Lam
15: Natural Views: Animals, Contingency and Death in Carlos Reygadas’s Japón and Lisandro Alonso’s Los Muertos, Tiago de Luca
16: The Sleeping Spectator: Nonhuman Aesthetics in Abbas Kiarostami’s Five: Dedicated to Ozu, Justin Remes
Part V: The Ethics and Politics of Slowness
17: Béla Tarr: The Poetics and the Politics of Fiction, Jacques Rancière
18: Ethics of the Landscape Shot: A.K.A Serial Killer and James Benning's Portraits of Criminals, Julian Ross
19: Slow Cinema and the Ethics of Duration, Asbjørn Grønstad
Part VI: Beyond ‘Slow Cinema’
20: Performing Evolution: Immersion, Unfolding and Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Innocence, Matilda Mroz
21: The Slow Road to Europe: The Politics and Aesthetics of Stalled Mobility in Hermakono and Morgen, Michael Gott
22: Crystallising the Past: Slow Heritage Cinema, Rob Stone and Paul Cooke
Illustrations
Foreword, Julian Stringer
Introduction: From Slow Cinema to Slow Cinemas, Tiago De Luca & Nuno Barradas Jorge
Part I: Historicising Slow Cinema
1: The Politics of Slowness and the Traps of Modernity, Lúcia Nagib
2: The Slow Pulse of the Era: Carl Th. Dreyer’s Film Style, C. Claire Thomson
3: The First Durational Cinema and the Real of Time, Michael Walsh
4: ‘The Attitude of Smoking and Observing’: Slow Film and Politics in the Cinema Of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Martin Brady
Part II: Contextualising Slow Cinema
5: Temporal Aesthetics of Drifting: Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness, Song Hwee Lim
6: Stills and Stillness in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema, Glyn Davis
7: Melancholia: The Long, Slow Cinema of Lav Diaz, William Brown
8: Exhausted Drift: Austerity, Dispossession and the Politics of Slow in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, Elena Gorfinkel
9: If These Walls Could Speak: From Slowness to Stillness in the Cinema of Jia Zhangke, Cecília Mello
Part III: Slow Cinema And Labour
10: Wastrels of Time: Slow Cinema’s Labouring Body, The Political Spectator, and the Queer, Karl Schoonover
11: Living Daily, Working Slowly: Pedro Costa’s in Vanda’s Room, Nuno Barradas Jorge
12: Working/Slow: Cinematic Style as Labour in Wang Bing’s Tie Xi Qu: West Of The Tracks, Patrick Brian Smith
13: ‘Slow Sounds’: Duration, Audition and Labour in Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide and Oxhide II, Philippa Lovatt
Part IV: Slow Cinema and the Nonhuman
14: It’s About Time: Slow Aesthetics in Experimental Ecocinema and Nature Cam Videos, Stephanie Lam
15: Natural Views: Animals, Contingency and Death in Carlos Reygadas’s Japón and Lisandro Alonso’s Los Muertos, Tiago de Luca
16: The Sleeping Spectator: Nonhuman Aesthetics in Abbas Kiarostami’s Five: Dedicated to Ozu, Justin Remes
Part V: The Ethics and Politics of Slowness
17: Béla Tarr: The Poetics and the Politics of Fiction, Jacques Rancière
18: Ethics of the Landscape Shot: A.K.A Serial Killer and James Benning's Portraits of Criminals, Julian Ross
19: Slow Cinema and the Ethics of Duration, Asbjørn Grønstad
Part VI: Beyond ‘Slow Cinema’
20: Performing Evolution: Immersion, Unfolding and Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Innocence, Matilda Mroz
21: The Slow Road to Europe: The Politics and Aesthetics of Stalled Mobility in Hermakono and Morgen, Michael Gott
22: Crystallising the Past: Slow Heritage Cinema, Rob Stone and Paul Cooke
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The loose, international movement known as contemporary slow cinema is both the most hotly discussed and the least popularly seen and understood body of feature films. This brilliant, extensive collection reveals the forerunners and current masters, the complex politics and contexts, the intricate forms and pleasures of an exciting trend.
In Slow Cinema, editors Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge explore the emergence of the titular "slow cinema" as an aesthetic category that animates a particular sense of cinematic time and duration, placing emphasis on introspection, reflection and contemplation… the volume is especially illuminating when underscoring an integral link between slow cinema, the non-human and ecocinema.'
