Slow Cinema and Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light | Video Essay

In this video essay, I examine the phenomenological and aesthetic effects of what I call durational metamorphoses, slow movements of incremental change that result in a sense of visual transformation, and which test the threshold of motion perception. These movements, such as the opening and closing shots of a sunset and sunrise in Silent Light (Reygadas, 2011), have become hallmarks of “slow cinema” in the last twenty years, but also can be traced back to the non-narrative experiments of structural film such as Fogline (Gottheim, 1970) or the landscape films of James Benning (e.g. Ten Skies, 2004). By analyzing sequences of durational metamorphoses across narrative and non-narrative cinemas, I demonstrate how a phenomenology of durational metamorphoses can help us rethink the discourse of cinematic slowness, which often treats slowness and stasis as encounters with Bergsonian duration—occasions to retreat away from the perception of the screen and toward the internal temporal flow of contemplation or reverie. Against this critical tendency, I locate a conceptual kinship between duration and the perceptual specificity of metamorphosis, showing one way that the discourses on slow temporality and motion perception come together.

Films:
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2009)

Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004)

Quintet of the Astonished (Bill Viola, 2000)

Snow White (Fleischer Bros. 1933)

Black or White [Music Video] (Vincent Patterson, 1991)

Monarch Butterfly Metamorphosis time-lapse FYV 1080 HD (FrontYardVideo,    • Monarch Butterfly Metamorphosis time-...  )

Time-lapse: The Power of Water (The Good Kid,    • Time-Lapse: The Power of Water  )


Texts:
Lucia Nagib, “The Politics of Slowness and the Traps of Modernity,” in Slow Cinema, eds. Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016): 25-47.

Dan Torre, Animation—Process, Cognition and Actuality (London: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2017)

Music:
Blear Moon - Backspace