A Long Hard Look at Slow Cinema Studies

Frame grab from Teodors/Theodore (Laila Pakalniņa, Latvia 2006). Read about Pakalniņa's films in the context of "slow cinema"

'Cinema is the art of playing with time.'
(Alain Resnais cited in Freddy Sweet, The Film Narratives of Alain Resnais (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1981), 5. and in Alex Ling, 'Parentheses in Time: L’Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) as Amorous Event', Screening the Past, 43, 2012)

Film Studies For Free has been taking its time lately. What better subject for it to tackle then, in its latest entry of links to online scholarly (alongside other, high quality and/or highly relevant) work, than slow cinema studies?

With no further ado, FSFF presents the below list, with many thanks to Girish Shambu for his initial, inspirational link.

• Luis Rocha Antunes, 'The Vestibular in Film: Orientation and Balance in Gus Van Sant's Cinema of Walking', Essays in Philosophy, 13.2, 2012
• Phil Ballard, 'In search of truth: Béla Tarr interviewed', Kinoeye 4.2, 2004
• Yvette Bíró, 'The Fullness of Minimalism', Rouge, 9, 2006
• Natalie Boehler, 'The Jungle as Border Zone: The Aesthetics of Nature in the Work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul', ASEAS-Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 4.2, 2011
• David Bordwell, 'Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film', originally in Film Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Spring, 2002), pp. 16-28
• David Bordwell, 'Intensified Continuity Revisited', Observations of Film Art, May 2007
• David Bordwell, 'Unsteadicam Chronicles', Observations on Film Art, August 17, 2007
• Jodi Brooks and Therese Davis, 'Untimely Cinema: Cinema Out of Time', Screening the Past, 34, 2012
• Charlotte Brunsdon, ‘"It's a film": medium specificity as textual gesture in Red Road and The Unloved', Journal of British Cinema and Television, 9(3), 2012
• James Callow, A "Post-Historical' Cinema of Suspense: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Limits of Redemption, PhD thesis, University of Bath, 2010
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Stop/Motion' in Eivind Røssaak (ed.), Between Stillness and Motion Film, Photography, Algorithms (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011) 
• Matthew Flanagan, 'Slow Cinema': Temporality and Style in Contemporary Art and Experimental Film, PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2012 Also here
• Matthew Flanagan, 'Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema', 16:9, 2008
• Dan Fox, 'Slow, Fast, and Inbetween', Frieze Magazine Blog, May 23, 2010
• Elena Gorfinkel, 'Global Art Networks: The Case of “Slow” Cinema', Global Currents, 8.1, 2012
• Catherine Grant, 'Voyage to Cinema: Studies of the Work of Theo Angelopoulos', Film Studies For Free, Feburary 2, 2012
• Catherine Grant, 'Bazinian, Neo-Bazinian, and Post-Bazinian Film Studies', Film Studies For Free, May 18, 2010
• Catherine Grant, 'Sculpting the Real: Michelangelo Antonioni Studies in the Centenary Year of his Birth', Film Studies For Free, May 23, 2012
• David Hudson, 'Cannes 2010. Cristi Puiu's "Aurora" + "Slow Cinema Vs Fast Films"', MUBI Notebook, May 15, 2010
• Nick James, 'Syndromes of a new century', Sight and Sound, February 2010
• David Jenkins, 'Theo Angelopoulos: the sweep of history', Sight and Sound, February 2012
• Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul (eds), Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012)
• Homay King, 'Sign in the Void: Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia', Afterall, 16, 2007
• Andrew Klevan, Disclosure of the everyday : the undramatic achievements in narrative film, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996
• Robert Koehler, 'Twilight Zone: Shadows and fog in the in-between world of Théo Court's Ocaso', Moving Image Source, January 11, 2012
• Ed Krčma, 'Cinematic Drawing in a Digital Age', Tate Online, October 1, 2010
• James Lattimer, 'Beyond Neo-Neo Realism: Reconfigurations of Neorealist Narration in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, Cinephile, 7.2, Fall 2011
• Danny Leigh, 'The view: Is it OK to be a film philistine?', The Guardian Film Blog, May 21, 2010
• Alex Ling, 'Parentheses in Time: L’Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961) as Amorous Event', Screening the Past, 43, 2012
• Tiago de Luca, 'Gus Van Sant’s Gerry and Visionary Realism', Cinephile, 7.2, Fall 2011
• Tiago Magalhães De Luca, Realism of the senses: a tendency in contemporary world cinema. PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2011
• David Martin-Jones, Becoming-other in time: the Deleuzian subject in cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002
• Henry K. Miller, 'Doing time:"slow cinema" at the AV Festival', Sight and Sound, March 2012
• Maria O'Connor, 'An Immense Clip: Film, Philosophy and the Proximate Violence of Becoming', FIlm-Philosophy Conference, 2011
• Maria O'Connor and Amanda Yates, '(Im)materialising Time', Studies in Material Thinking, Vol. 5, 2011
• Līva Pētersone, 'Latvian Documentary Cinema: The New Generation', Selection of Articles on Latvian Films (date unknown)
• Michael Pigott, Time and Film Style, PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2009
• Effie Rassos, 'Everyday Narratives: Reconsidering Filmic Temporality and Spectatorial Affect Through the Quotidian,' PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 2005
• Laura Rascaroli and John David Rhodes, 'INTERSTITIAL, PRETENTIOUS, ALIENATED, DEAD: Antonioni at 100', in Rascaroli and Rhodes (eds), Antonioni: Centenary Essays (BFI/Palgrave, 2011)
• Vadim Rizov, 'Slow cinema backlash', IFC.com, May 12, 2010
• Eva Karene Romero, Cine en Emergencia: National Identity in Post-dictatorial Audiovisual Production in Paraguay, PhD. thesis, University of Arizona, 2012
• Jonathan Romney, 'Slow war cinema and Bollysploitation', Sight and Sound, May 2012
• Sukhdev Sandhu, '"Slow cinema" fights back against Bourne's supremacy', The Guardian, March 9, 2012
• Karl Schoonover, 'Slowness as Intimacy in Apichatpong’s Mekong Hotel', In Media Res, December 12, 2012
• Steven Shaviro, 'Slow Cinema Vs Fast Films', The Pinocchio Theory, May 12, 2010
• Deborah Shaw, 'Trans)National Images and Cinematic Spaces:the cases of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también (2001) and Carlos Reygadas’ Japón (2002)', Iberoamericana, XL, 44, 2011
• Justin A. Sully, Cine-Demographies: Population Crisis in Late Twentieth Century Film Culture, PhD thesis, McMaster University, 2009
• Lara Thompson, 'In Praise of Speed: The Value of Velocity in Contemporary Cinema', Dandelion Journal, 2.1, 2011
• Donato Totaro, Time and the long take in The Magnificent Ambersons, Ugetsu and Stalker, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001
• Harry Tuttle, 'Slower or Contemplative?', Unspoken Cinema, March 17, 2010
• Harry Tuttle, 'Slow films, easy life (Sight and Sound)', Unspoken Cinema, May 12, 2010
• James Udden, 'Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization', Style, Volume 43, No. 1, Spring 2009
• Noah Viernes, 'Cinematic Forms and the Assembly of Cities', MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No.15, 2008

Bazinian, Neo-Bazinian, and Post-Bazinian Film Studies

Scott Ross, 'The Myth of Total Cinema", New College of Florida January 2007 Independent Study Project. Set to Schoenberg's "Three Pieces for Piano." Based on the essay "The Myth of Total Cinema" by André Bazin.

Film Studies For Free decided to round up some classy links today to studies either by the hugely influential film critic André Bazin (1918-1958), co-founder of the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, or by those who use or comment upon his work in their own contributions to film studies. As the below, openly accessible works more than amply show, even in this the digital film age, Bazin is an earlier generation film theorist who keeps on giving to the discipline that he, as much as anyone else, helped to found.

Online Baziniana: 

• André Bazin, 'Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?' (1953), Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 2, January 2002

• André Bazin, 'The Ontology of the Photographic Image', translated by Hugh Gray, Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Summer, 1960), pp. 4-9

• Cahiers du Cinéma Interview with Orson Welles by André Bazin and Charles Bitsch (at Senses of Cinema) translated and annotated by Sally Shafto

• André Bazin, 'Fifteen Years of French Cinema', translated and with an introduction by Bert Cardullo, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 64, May 2009

• André Bazin, 'Monsieur Hulot and Time', translated and with an introduction by Bert Cardullo, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 64, May 2009

• André Bazin, on René Clement and literary adaptation: Two original reviews

• André Bazin, on Claude Autant-Lara and literary adaptation: Four original reviews

• André Bazin, 'The Life and Death of Superimposition'

 Post/Neo-Baziniana:

• Joseph D. Anderson, 'Scene and Surface in the Cinema : Implications for Realism', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 12, n° 2, 2002, p. 61-73

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Hatari! and the Hollywood Safari Picture', Senses of Cinema, Issue 52, 2009

• Michael J. Anderson, '"Eric Rohmer, Cross-Textuality and the Auteur Theory", Tativille, March 1, 2010

• Michael J Anderson, ''What is Cinema? More than Cinema: The Ontological Discourse of Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees (1994)'', Tativille, March 30, 2009

• Michael J. Anderson, 'The Mortal Storm: 1940 and After', Senses of Cinema, Issue 52, 2009

• Michael J Anderson: "Being Above/Being Within: A Taxonomy of the 360° Panorama", Tativille, October 29, 2009

• Dudley Andrew, 'The Camera Searching in the World', What Cinema Is (Oxford: Wiley, 2010)

• Karyn Becker, 'Comments on Tom Gunning’s and Vivian Sobchack’s presentations', Digital Aesthetics, Special Issue of Nordicom Review: The 16th Nordic Conference on Media and Communication Research, Kristiansand, 15-17 August 2003

• David Bordwell, 'Widescreen Aesthetics and Mise-en-Scène Criticism', The Velvet Light Trap no. 21 (Summer 1985):118–25

• Ian Conrich and Estella Tincknell, 'Film Purity, the Neo-Bazinian Ideal, and Humanism in Dogma 95', P:O.V. No.10, 2005

• Sarah Cooper, 'Montage, Militancy, Metaphysics: Chris Marker and André Bazin', Image [and] Narrative, 2010

• Arild Fetveit, 'Comments on Vivian Sobchack’s and Tom Gunning’s presentations', Digital Aesthetics, Special Issue of Nordicom Review: The 16th Nordic Conference on Media and Communication Research, Kristiansand, 15-17 August 2003

• Rosalind Galt, “It’s so cold in Alaska”: Evoking Exploration Between Bazin and The Forbidden Quest', Discourse, 28.1, (Winter, 2006), pp. 53–71

• Michael Grant, 'The Enduring Value of André Bazin: A Report on the 46th Thessaloniki Film Festival, 18–27 November 2005', Film Studies, 2006  (Scroll down to pp 68-69)

• Tom Gunning, 'What’s the Point of an Index? or, Faking Photographs', Digital Aesthetics, Special Issue of Nordicom Review: The 16th Nordic Conference on Media and Communication Research, Kristiansand, 15-17 August 2003

• Jan Holmberg, "Ideals of Immersion in Early Cinema",  Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 14, n° 1, 2003, p. 129- 147

• Wijnand Ijsselsteijn, 'Presence in the Past: what can we learn from Media History?', in Being There: Concepts, effects and measurement of user presence in synthetic environments G. Riva, F. Davide, W.A IJsselsteijn (eds.) ( Amsterdam: Ios Press, 2003)

• Bruce Isaacs, 'The Cinematic Real: Aesthetics and Spectacle', Sydney Studies in English, Vol. 33, 2007

• Bruce Isaacs, 'Film Cool: Towards a New Film Aesthetic', PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2006

• Frank Kessler, 'What you get is what you see: Digital images and the claim on the real', Digital Material, Edited by Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009) Scroll to p. 187

• Ohad Landesman, 'In and out of this world: digital video and the aesthetics of realism in the new hybrid documentary', Studies in Documentary Film, Volume 2, Number 1, 2008

• David Lavery, 'From Cinespace to Cyberspace: Zionists and Agents, Realists and Gamers in The Matrix and eXistenZ', The Journal of Popular Film and Television, 28 (2001): 150-58

• Mark Le Fanu, 'Metaphysics of the "long take": some post-Bazinian reflections', P:O.V. No.4 - On camera movement and filmic space, 1997

• Stephen Prince, 'The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts: Cinema and Cinematography in the Digital Era', Film Quarterly, Vol. no. 57, Issue no. 3, pages 24-33

• Jonathan Rosenbaum,'What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, What is Film Study?) JonathanRosenbaum,com, May 4, 2009

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia', JonathanRosenbaum,com, June 24, 2004'

• Michael Russell, 'The Kuleshov Effect and the Death of the Auteur', Forum, Issue 1, Autumn 2005

• Seung-hoon Jeong, 'André Bazin’s Ontological Other: The Animal in Adventure Films', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Girish Shambu, 'André Bazin and Caboose', girish, March 11, 2009

• Steven Shaviro, 'Emotion Capture: Affect in Digital Film', Projections, Volume 1, Issue 2, Winter 2007: 63-82

• Vivian Sobchack, 'Nostalgia for a Digital Object: Regrets on the Quickening of QuickTime', Millennium Film Journal No. 34 (Fall 1999): The Digital

• Robert Alan Spiegel, 'Verga and the Realist Cinema', Carte Italiane, 1(2), 1981

• Donato Totaro, 'Introduction to André Bazin, Part 1: Film Style Theory in its Historical Context', Offscreen, July 31, 2003

• Donato Totaro, 'Introduction to André Bazin, Part 2: Style as a Philosophical Idea', Offscreen, July 31, 2003

• Harry Tuttle, 'Bazin - on Criticism - 1943', Screenville, May 17, 2006

• Harry Tuttle, Bazin - on Criticism - 1958', Screenville, July 14, 2006

• Prakash Younger, 'What is Cinephilosophy? A Bazinian Paradigm, Part 1 and 2', Offscreen Journal, Volume 13, Issue 2 (Bazin Renewed), February 2009

• Prakash Younger, 'Re-reading Bazin’s Ontological Argument', Offscreen, July 31, 2003

Some May Must-Reads

Film Studies For Free is back from its travels with some brief but essential recommendations for reading. Consider yourselves compassionately instructed to enjoy the following gems from the brilliant film-blogosphere:

• Michael J Anderson at Tativille has just posted a stunning take on the palimpsestic texture of the tremulously gripping film Cloverfield (an FSFF digi-horror favourite along with Rec). Equally unmissable is Tativille's preceding post: a full-length footnoted essay by Anderson called 'What is Cinema? More than Cinema: The Ontological Discourse of Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees (1994)'
• Dan North at Spectacular Attractions continues his wonderful experiments with scholarly film blogging with an insightful and almost live critical analysis of Don't Look Now. Also see his great recent post on She... North concludes each of his posts with rich links lists on the films, to boot.
• Fascinating and highly informed discussion over at Jonathan Rosenbaum's site about the new edition of André Bazin's What is Cinema? (translated by Timothy Barnard) - 'What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, What is Film Study?)'. Also see Girish's compelling thread on this edition.
  
• Thanks to Chris Cagle's (in itself) thought-provoking post 'Theory-Praxis Divide', FSFF got to read Tim Burke's amusing and highly lucid enquiry into why (sometimes/most times) those who teach (theory) can't do (creative practice), 'Why Can’t You?'
• A (customarily) beautifully written and illustrated post from Luke McKernan at The Bioscope : 'An excellent dumb discourse' treats Shakespeare in early cinema.
• Finally (for today), Benjamin Wright's site Aspect Ratio has moved bloghost: the move is accompanied by a lovely post on approaches to music in film, 'Hearing Beyond Words'. There seem to FSFF to be a few teething problems with the new server but you can access the post still at the Wordpress site.

P.S. Let's actually finish with a Call For Papers for an annual conference hosted by an Open Access film and visual studies periodical much loved by FSFF: World Picture Journal.

The 2009 World Picture Conference

October 23-24, 2009
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, Oklahoma

Style

Keynote Speakers

Edward Branigan
(University of California, Santa Barbara)

&

Alexander García Düttman
(Goldsmiths College)

We believe the question of style is in need of new thinking, across media, disciplines and modes of thought. We hope, therefore, to receive abstracts that reflect or extend out of any number of approaches to the question of style (theoretical, philosophical, historical, formal, generic, etc.). Our conference (like our journal) is inflected by a strong interest in the intersection of political and aesthetic questions concerning cinema, visual art, and visual theory, but we encourage the submission of abstracts that do not necessarily occupy themselves with the cinema and/or the visual.

Proposals (250 words), including a brief bio, should be sent to Brian Price at brian.price@okstate.edu by June 1