Aside from writing and directing films like Raging Bull and American Gigolo, Paul Schrader as film theorist has christened the genre of long movies as "Slow Cin

Aside from writing and directing films like Raging Bull and American Gigolo, Paul Schrader as film theorist has christened the genre of long movies as "Slow Cinema." In his thesis Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Schrader argues that the deliberated depictions in lengthy movies transforms the act of the ordinary into a realm of transcendence. For a point of reference, Schrader has produced a famous diagram where he identifies acclaimed filmmakers like Tarkovsky, Akerman (mentioned in article), Weerasetakul, Tarr as practitioners of slow cinema[1]. [1] https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/figure18.jpg?w=725 https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/figure1... --- Personally, these long films were an experience in themselves: - Sátántangó, Bela Tarr, 7 hours 18 min Tarr depicts the countryside as a slow, humdrum experience. By confronting viewers with the elongated pedestrian experiences, the film accentuates the subtle rhythms in everyday life. - Hitler: A Film from Germany, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, 7 hours 22 min Perhaps bombastic, and even pretentious, but Syberberg has successfully constructed his own world from his poetic sentiments. It laments on how the once-noble "Germanism" has been (as put by Susan Sontag) "retroactively tainted" by Hitler. - Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovsky, 2 hours 5 min I know this isn't as long as the other titles, but the penultimate shot of the film is 10 minutes long. It depicts a man walking around holding a candle. While very little happens, the parsimony of the shot directs the audience's attention to the sparse movements, which compounds the until the action is resolved.