Cinemas of Endurance begins by questioning the way in which critics and scholars have addressed art cinema over the last decade, specifically the films referred to as “slow cinema.” These films have garnered widespread attention since the start of the 21st century for how they deploy what many believe to be anachronistic and redundant formal techniques, often discussed in terms of nostalgia and pastiche. This dissertation argues that these films have been unfairly couched within this discourse that largely judges their validity based on their stylistic similarities to the art cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Breaking from this direction, this project proposes we take these films and their aesthetic seriously, not for stubbornly refuting the prevailing formal trends in filmmaking, but for how it creates a critical optic that grants us a greater capacity to recognize some of the most prevailing social, political, and economic issues of the last decade. Further, by using stylistic techniques that can often register as out of place, or protracted, these films can help us to understand the way our physical, mental, and affective coordinates have shifted in this historical moment. Each chapter of this dissertation takes an exemplary film from this subset of art cinema and addresses how the aesthetic works against established modes of viewing to render visible modalities of life that often escape critical ire because they are expected. This project relies on the theories and methodologies of film and media studies, aesthetic theory, realism, materialism, accelerationism, cultural studies, continental philosophy, and political philosophy. The films and filmmakers analyzed include: The Limits of Control (2009), dir. Jim Jarmusch; Ossos (1997), In Vanda’s Room (2000), and Colossal Youth (2006), dir. Pedro Costa; Dogville (2003), dir. Lars von Trier; and, 2046 (2004), dir. Wong Kar-wai.

Submitted by isabela.moljf@hotmail.com (isabela.moljf@hotmail.com) on 2017-06-19T15:09:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 marianasibelefernandes.pdf: 1108255 bytes, checksum: f008fe309f4318d5c763a477af2bdca7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-06-29T12:27:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 marianasibelefernandes.pdf: 1108255 bytes, checksum: f008fe309f4318d5c763a477af2bdca7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-29T12:27:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 marianasibelefernandes.pdf: 1108255 bytes, checksum: f008fe309f4318d5c763a477af2bdca7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-25 / O fascínio pela dimensão temporal, evidenciado na forma e ou na temática de algumas obras, marca uma das principais características encontradas em parte do documentário brasileiro contemporâneo. A ênfase na passagem do tempo ganha maior relevo quando, na busca incessante pela experiência singular do outro, os filmes abordam a memória pessoal como possibilidade de relacionar o ordinário, os gestos mais banais a um modo particular de ser e de estar num mundo em devir. E, se tratando da forma, a preferência por imagens longas e fixas intensifica a ideia de inexorabilidade do tempo, provocando no espectador o que Lúcia Nagib (2013) chama de stasis reflexiva. A tendência por um cinema mais contemplativo, cuja estética da lentidão nos direciona para novas formas de realismo cinematográfico, pode estar relacionada com o que tem se convencionado chamar de slow cinema – caracterizado, principalmente, pela fixação com o tempo, o uso de tomadas longas, a falta de enredo e o foco no cotidiano. / The fascination for the temporal dimension, evidenced in the form and or thematic of some works, marks one of the main features found in part of contemporary brazilian documentary. The emphasis on the passage of time comes to the fore when, in the incessant search for the individual's unique experience, the films approach personal memory as the possibility of relating the ordinary, the most banal gestures to a particular way of being and being in a becoming world. And, as for form, the preference for long and fixed images intensifies the idea of inexorability of time, provoking in the spectator what Lúcia Nagib (2013) calls reflexive stasis. The tendency for a more contemplative cinema, whose aesthetics of slowness directs us to new forms of cinematic realism, may be related to what has been conventionally termed slow cinema - mainly characterized by the fixation with time, the use of long shots, the lack of plot and the focus on everyday life.

Uppsatsens syfte ligger i att undersöka huruvida filmteoretikern David Bordwells två inflytelserika berättarmodeller från 1980-talet fortfarande återfinns inom samtida filmproduktion. Jag fördjupar mig i det klassiska- respektive konstfilmsberättandet och jämför vidare de typiska elementen från de två berättarmodellerna med formatet slow cinema. I definitionen av slow cinema utgår jag ifrån filmvetaren Matthew Flanagans utredning av vad formatet innebär samt de tre byggstenarna han anser vara mest väsentliga. Dessa är långa tagningar, en ickeberättande struktur och skildringar av realistiska, vardagliga skeenden. Med en utgångspunkt i detta utför jag en närläsning av Alfonso Cuaróns film Gravity (2013). Analysen fokuserar på hur element från slow cinema kan adapteras till en mer kommersiellt accepterad film med ett klassiskt berättande. Gravity visar sig exemplifiera dels Cuaróns personliga stil men även ett samspel av element från de två berättarmodellerna, och slow cinema. Avslutningsvis förs en diskussion där jag jämför analysens resultat dels med tidigare forskning samt ett antal andra filmexempel. Slutsatsen blir således att konstnärlig auktoritet och filmisk kvalitet likväl kan uppstå inom kommersiella modeller som konstnärliga sådana. Dagens filmklimat och dess vidare utveckling kan gynnas av en uppluckring av de föråldrade konventioner som Bordwells berättarmodeller innebär. Istället skall filmskapare fritt kunna röra sig mellan olika stilar, tillvägagångsätt och berättande, likt Cuaróns förkroppsligade kamera.

Contemporary Romanian cinema, particularly in its internationally successful instances, displays formal characteristics that have often led to its being seen in terms of the so-called Slow Cinema trend in contemporary cinema. This thesis proposes that there is something distinctive about slowness in contemporary Romanian films, similar to and yet different from Slow Cinema. Through a detailed analysis of films made by Cristi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu, two of the most representative contemporary Romanian filmmakers, Romanian slow films emerge as a less stringent form of slowness characterised by tension. This thesis first looks at some of the ways in which slowness can be developed in film - through the use of the long take and the trope of waiting along with the use of stillness and silence. Within this slowness an attitude of contemplation emerges, a characteristic that is key to Slow Cinema. Through close textual analysis of a number of films with a reputation for slowness, both classic and more recent examples, this thesis looks at how the techniques used to develop slowness in film allow for variation and how they can be used not only to create this attitude of contemplation but also to create tension. While this aspect has been less discussed with the more prevalent focus on Slow Cinema and its themes of contemplation, tension can be identified in a variety of films, both those considered part of Slow Cinema and those considered slow films. The distinctiveness of slowness in contemporary Romanian cinema is partly to do with its being rooted in Romanian culture. This study looks at Romanian cinematic and cultural inheritance, specifically at how slowness figures in this history. This thesis contributes to the existing body of research on contemporary Romanian cinema addressing its most salient characteristic, its sense of slowness, by placing it in relation to wider discussions about slowness and Slow Cinema as well as by linking its distinctiveness to wider cultural notions and practices of temporal organisation as well as the social history of the nation.

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Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.