Slow Cinema at Rotterdam and Glasgow

The new year starts of nicely for Slow Cinema. The International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Glasgow Film Festival have a range of slow films on offer. If you are around those locations, it’s worth checking their schedules. Here’s a brief overview:

IFFR

Costa da Morte (Coast of Death) – dir Lois Patiño, Spain*

28 – dir Prasanna Jayakody, Sri Lanka*

Another Hungary – dir Dénes Nagy, Hungary*

De chair et de lait – dir Bernard Bloch, France*

Japón – dir Carlos Reygadas, Mexico

Letters from the South (omnibus) – section dir by Tsai Ming-liang

Norte, The End of History – dir Lav Diaz, Philippines

Prologue to the Great Desaparecido – dir Lav Diaz, Philippines

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness – dir Ben River, Ben Russell, France/Estonia

Story of my Death – dir Albert Serra, Spain

‘Til Madness Do Us Part – dir Wang Bing, Hongkong*

Slow Cinema

GFF

Harmony Lessons – dir Emir Baigazin, Kazakhstan*

Norte, The End of History – dir Lav Diaz, Philippines

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness – dir Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, France/Estonia

The IFFR has started yesterday. The Glasgow Film Festival will run from 20 February 2014 – 2 March 2014. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow.

Films marked with an * are suspected slow films. It sounds as if they would be slow, but I can only really tell once I see them. And this won’t be soon as I’m unfortunately not living near Rotterdam, and for someone who doesn’t live in Glasgow either, the scheduling is a bit unfortunate. I will catch the films one day, though.

Slow Cinema at London Film Festival

The line up for this year’s London Film Festival has ben revealed, and it looks as though it’s going to be a strong and slow festival.

After the success at Cannes and other prominent festivals, Lav Diaz’s Norte will be screened in the category “Dare”. Albert Serra’s new film, Story of my Death, which recently won the Golden Leopard at Locarno, is also part of this category. We have Ben Rivers’ new film A Spell to Ward off the Darkness in the category “Experimenta”.

Apart from these usual suspects, French film Camille Claudel 1915 is also part of the festival. I’m convinced that there are more slow films in the line up than are actually talked about. I have already mentioned that there is a tendency to (deliberately) overlook equally great films, made by unknown directors, such as Yulene Olaizalo. I hope to get to see trailers of most films, and I can hopefully see a few of them in cinema, too.

What will be talked about for sure are the three above-named “big” names. But there is a larger realm of slow film out there. It’s just a question of whether it’ll be talked about. I’m looking forward to the BFI’s own edition of the Sight & Sound after the festival…particularly after they have pronunced Slow Cinema dead after Cannes. It’s going to be an interesting editorial by Nick James, I’m sure!

Update: I forgot to mention Philip Groening’s The Police Officer’s Wife. Groening made that unbelievably beautiful film Into Great Silence a few years ago.