Ausma – Laila Pakalnina (2015)
How does one handle a film, which so strikingly resembles human memory, in particular traumatic memory? The Baltic states have had a tumultuous history, most of which isn’t known in the world, let alone in…
Bela Tarr
Your Face – Tsai Ming-liang (2018)
When have you last looked at someone? I mean, really looked at someone, took your time to study every detail. I remember this marvellous shot in Silence in Dreamland by Tito Molina in which one…
Kaili Blues – Bi Gan (2015)
It is impossible to retain a past thought, to seize a future thought, and even to hold onto a present thought. There couldn’t be a better beginning to a film than this extract of the…
Landscape / Character
The end of the year proves to be busy, and it’s not easy at the moment to sit down and watch a film. I hope that I soon get to see Wang Bing’s Dead Souls. This…
The Long Take – Art Cinema and the Wondrous (Lutz Koepnick, 2017)
Time for a new book review. It’s been comparatively quiet in academic publishing when it comes to Slow Cinema. I speak of experience when I say that it’s not easy to publish something on the…
Shoah – Claude Lanzmann (1985)
It is clear to me that Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) would never make it into a Slow Cinema list. Perhaps, it shouldn’t be. Perhaps, it should simply remain a film apart from the rest in order…
I don’t want to sleep alone – Tsai Ming-liang (2006)
I discovered Tsai Ming-liang’s films early on in my research into Slow Cinema, or even well before I started my PhD. The director from Taiwan could, in fact, be the second slow-film director I have…
Arresting trauma – Martti Helde’s In The Crosswinds (2014)
“On the night of 14 June 1941, more than 40,000 innocent people were deported from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The aim of this secret operation – done on Stalin’s orders – was to ethnically cleanse…
Good Luck – Ben Russell (2017)
It’s been quite some time that I have been told to explore the films of Ben Russells. I think the very first recommendation dates back to 2012, when I have been asked to watch his Let…
The Sacrifice – Andrei Tarkovsky (1986)
“Humanity is on the wrong road.” Andrei Tarkovsky’s ultimate film, The Sacrifice, released in the year of the director’s death, is perhaps one of his bleakest films. Once more, I see a steady development towards an…