Abstract
In her article, the author describes slow cinema as one of the most important tendencies in contemporary art-house cinema, simultaneously focusing on its temporal emanations. The text emphasizes the notion of rhythm and divides it into two subcategories: external and internal rhythm. The latter is close to the embodied experience, therefore it influences viewers affectively, as a somatic resonance. It enables a spectator’s intensive engagement in slow films. The author’s argumentation is based on rhythm research and existential phenomenology
Highlights
The second, qualitative or interior group of factors could be described by words written by Andrey Tarkovsky years ago: “The distinctive time running through the shots makes the rhythm of the picture; and rhythm is determined not by the length of the edited pieces, but by the pressure of the time that runs through them
I do not put it in a negative context as is common – feeling bored is similar to the internalized time flow for me
Edward Adolf Sonnenschein wrote the essay What Is Rhythm? a year later, in 1925. He paid attention mostly to psychological aspects of feeling rhythm, how it is generated in the mind of spectator: “rhythm is the feature in a sequence of events in time which produces in the mind which perceives it an impression of proportion between the durations of the events or groups of events which comprise the sequence”
Summary
For over two decades slow cinema has stayed one of the most poignant tendencies in contemporary art-house cinema ( it is slowly disappearing according to some researchers and film critics – Schrader, 2017; Syska, 2019, p. 23). Its roots could be found in modernist cinema (Syska, 2014), avant-garde cinema (especially in the structuralist tradition of Michael Snow and Chantal Akerman, and in film tableaux of Andy Warhol) and in the relation between movies and visual art in galleries All these contexts have emphasized temporality which becomes the main theme within themselves. The second, qualitative or interior group of factors could be described by words written by Andrey Tarkovsky years ago: “The distinctive time running through the shots makes the rhythm of the picture; and rhythm is determined not by the length of the edited pieces, but by the pressure of the time that runs through them. Among other means of expression which highlight this temporal experience are: reduced editing, long shots (Matthew Flanagan has distincted exemplary length of shots in Béla Tarr’s, Albert Serra’s or Paz Encina’s films, compared it with mainstream, Hollywood cinema and determined that their duration multiplies regular shots [Flanagan, 2008]), dedramatization strategies, and preference for static camera devoid of its narrative functions (for example it can become independent from the main character and his or hers onscreen presence as in La libertad [2001] by Lisandro Alonso, or focusing on space composition and not storytelling as in the Malmkrog [2020] by Cristi Puiu)
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