Experimental College

Instructor Spotlight: James Oley

James Oley, Instructor of EXP-0050-E: Pioneers of Slow Cinema: Art-House & Experimental Film, Is a Senior Majoring in International Literary and Visual Studies
A young man with short brown hair smiles at the camera in an outdoor portrait. He wears a light-colored button-up shirt, with a blurred background of green trees, water, and a cloudy sky behind him

What is slow cinema?

Slow cinema is a stylistic paradigm in contemporary art cinema that has a long and fascinating history in postwar European art-house film, American experimental cinema, and more.

Slow films can be identified by a slower pace, longer runtimes, the use of the long take, sparse narratives, and minimal dialogue, among other stylistic features. Slow cinema is often categorized as "boring", but if you stay patient and let these films wash over you, there's a lot going on.

What is your favorite film that would fit under the category and why?

I think my favorite slow film would have to be Michelangelo Antonioni's 1961 film La notte or Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker from 1979. They both thematize this idea of aimless wandering in a really interesting way. I'm super excited to be teaching them both!

What can slow cinema teach us about the world around us?

I think slow cinema offers a crucial artistic resistance to what feels like the growing speed of the world around us, and the technologies that accelerate this speed. Taking three hours to contemplate a film in which "nothing happens" feels meditative and healing in this cultural landscape.