Slow Cinema (Paperback)

Tiago de Luca

ISBN 10: 0748696040 / ISBN 13: 9780748696048

Published by Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2015

About this Item

Paperback. 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, Bela 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. Focused on a body of films bound together through a cinematic aesthetic of slowness, this book is a pioneering effort to situate, theorise and map out slow cinema within contemporary global film production and across world cinema history. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780748696048

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Slow Cinema (Paperback)
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0748696040
• ISBN 13: 9780748696048
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

Tiago de Luca is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Planetary Cinema: Film, Media and the Earth (2022) and Realism of the Senses in World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality (2014), He is the co-editor of Elemental World Cinema: Cinematic Entanglements of Earth, Fire, Water and Air (2025), Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema (2022, EUP) and Slow Cinema (2016, EUP). He is the series editor, with Lúcia Nagib, of Film Thinks (Bloomsbury).

Nuno Barradas Jorge is an Assistant Professor in Film and Media at the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies, University of Nottingham. He has published ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa (2020). He is the co-editor, with Tiago de Luca, of Slow Cinema (2016). His work appeared in, among others, Portugal's Global Cinema (2017) and Migration in Lusophone Cinema (2014).