A film should never feel like a closed arc.
The most honest and compelling stories are the ones we sense began unspooling long before we started watching and keep going long after the scene has cut to black. The ending is our own, but life transcends the final cut.
2017 felt long and unwieldy, most times with beauty. This kind of beauty, however, is imbued with sadness because it is a timeful beauty — it is beautiful precisely because we know it will extinguish. And extinguish it did — into 2018.
Here’s a look back at some of our favorite slow media pieces of the year: the works of art that transcended their medium, seeped into our bodies, and left us transformed.
AKIRA’S TOP PICKS:
[Slow Cinema] Diamond Island by Davy Chou. Technically, I saw this movie in November of 2016, but 2017 was the year that it got a wider distribution in the US, Europe and elsewhere in Asia. And I will never forget the conversations we've had with the filmmaker Davy Chou and friends.
[Slow Journalism] "How I Got My Attention Back” by Craig Mod. Attention is a big theme of my work, and 2017 felt as if we finally *noticed* how we weren't paying attention to the right things. That's a start.
[Slow... App?] Habitica. This little web app really changed my life. The 80s 8-bit graphics speaks to my inner-, and real-life 9-year-olds. You get to join a party for a quest, hatch an egg, keep a stable... all by checking off your todo's!
Diamond Island directed by Davy Chou
ÁI’S TOP PICKS:
[Slow Cinema] Syndromes and a Century by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. This film was also released in 2016, but my first introduction to Apichatpong’s work was in 2017. And since then, I haven’t been able to shake off the haunting images out of my idea. The long tracks. The still observations. His cinema has changed me in ways I have yet the words to articulate.
[Poetry] Night Sky & Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. “How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.”
[Photography] Cielo Yu. I’m not often struck by photography, as I am often inundated with images all day, including my own. But Cielo Yu’s whimsical realism left me gasping, whether from shortness of breath or excitement, I still can’t answer.
[Television] Atlanta created by and starring Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino). Pure delight, directed by Hiro Murai.
SAMUEL’S TOP PICKS:
[Slow Cinema]: My favorite new watch in 2017 was Syndromes and a Century Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
[Slow Cinema]: My favorite new film release in 2017: Columbus by Kogonada
[Music Video]: My favorite human-centered music video: Territory by The Blaze
[Literature]: My favorite book: Geoff Dyer's book on writing a book about D.H. Lawrence: "Out of Sheer Rage"
For more of Samuel's cinema picks, visit his tumblr Cinemoths.
Let us know which pieces of slow media has moved you.