MUBI brings you a great new film every day.  Start your 7-day free trial today!
Watch a new film every day for $4.99.
Try MUBI for FREE.
Learn More
 

Contemplative Cinema Starter Pack

By: © <',))( Astro-T​ofuprax​ographe​r

Ooooh, a list. Totally subjective choices, of course, and some of them I haven’t seen, I just know they’re contemplative by reputation. The List is still a work in progress, I’ll add more when they come to mind, and of course, suggestions would be welcome.

I’m just going to steal the description from the Unspoken Cinema blog
“the kind that rejects conventional narration to develop almost essentially through minimalistic visual language and atmosphere alone, without the help of music, dialogue, melodrama, action-montage, and the star system.”

Harry Tuttle also added: “…it could be confusing to mix in certain films that feature a general “minimalistic” narrative, but still use dialogue as an important narrative drive. My Dinner With André doesn’t exist without its dialogue. Most of the film content is articulated through this conversation. But I agree its mise en scène is minimalist in its own way.
Same problem with the major voiceover/dialogue in The Inner Scar, The Sacrifice, L’Eclisse, Broken Flowers, Two-Lane Blacktop, 24 City, Chronicle of a Chinese Woman… and a couple others are arguable.
If the film provides narrative signposts, clues, walkthrough with words, it doesn’t let the spectator figure all out by contemplating at the images alone. Minimal dialogue doesn’t distract as far as it doesn’t spell out character’s motives, personality, intentions to cue a following scene. Especially mundane conversations that have nothing to do with the film’s principal narrative; it just gives a natural slice of life for these characters without constructing an artificial narrative drive.”*

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

*I included the films Harry mentioned in the list anyway since they can be good starting points before delving into the stricter models of contemplative cinema.

I’ve basically picked films that provide a nice antidote to today’s overstimulating, overloading films. Most of the films of this list just put me in a relaxed state, sometimes, all I just want to see are un-narrated moving images.

For further reading, check this out.

Rounding up the usual suspects:


Peter Hutton


Bela Tarr


Apichatpong Weerasethakul


Chantal Akerman


Lav Diaz


Tsai Ming-liang


Alexandr Sokurov


Sharunas Bartas


Wang Bing


Lisandro Alonso


Pedro Costa


Claire Denis


James Benning

Well, what would this list be without clips?

lost in a moment from dennis wheatley on Vimeo.

Let Each One Go Where He May (EXCERPT) from Ben Russell on Vimeo.

A big thanks to RET for adding more contemplative films to the Auteurs database.

<’,))(

 

Wall

Displaying 4 of 53 wall posts.
see all
Picture of Osmar Domingos

Osmar Domingos

7Apr13

I think Kiarostami's Shirin is much more "contemplative" than The Wind will Carry Us

Picture of ExperimentoFilm

ExperimentoFilm

26Mar13

http://mubi.com/films/nathalie-granger

Picture of Sean P

Sean P

24Sep12

may i recommend the films of jon jost? The Bed You Sleep In in particular.

Picture of Bitė

Bitė

4Jul12

to fan this again :) among my top 10 mubi lists for sure :)

Fans

Displaying 5 of 549 fans.
see all
Picture of Juan Felipe Luna

Juan Felipe Luna

Picture of Morgen Ruff

Morgen Ruff

Picture of oneaprilday

oneapri​lday

Picture of GaffordKINO

Gafford​KINO

Picture of Erik Gregersen

Erik Gregers​en