Earth – Nikolaus Geyrhalter (2019)
Towards the end of the last decade, a new term made its way into public discourse: the anthropocene. Although this isn’t entirely true. The term has been in use for quite some time, but it…
contemplation
Spoon – Laila Pakalnina (2019)
Before I say a single word about Laila Pakalnina’s new film Spoon (2019), I need to thank Elina Reitere and the Latvian Film Institute, who allow me to discover the filmography of Pakalnina. It is…
Memory of Time – HeeWon Lee (Rennes, 2019)
It is possibly the first time that I’m writing about a specific video installation here on this blog. I have read quite a bit during my PhD research in order to understand the uses of…
Walden – Daniel Zimmermann (2018)
Not so long ago, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden. Published in the middle of the 19th century, it is now something of an iconic book about nature, about the woods, about the…
Closing Time – Nicole Vögele (2018)
The beauty of Slow Cinema is that directors welcome you to their world and let you explore it in your own way. If you follow one director in particular and have seen all of his/her…
Taste of Cement – Ziad Kalthoum (2017)
My father’s hand was the city of Beirut. I came to Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste of Cement by accident and it’s one of those accidents that you’re grateful for. Not so long ago, I read a long article on the Guardian about our obsession with…
A Yangtze Landscape – Xu Xin (2017)
There are films, which I’m grateful for. Grateful for being able to watch them, grateful for being able to write about them. Grateful for being able to experience them. There are those films that go…
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…
Slow reconciliation with nature
This morning, I left the house at 8 o’clock. I went to a bridge that is close to my flat and that overlooks the canal Saint Martin in Rennes. I waited a bit but decided…
Five – Abbas Kiarostami (2003)
The beach. A beach. Somewhere. It doesn’t matter where we are, and Abbas Kiarostami knows this. What matters is his recording of the soothing and calming waves, small but significant in their way across the…