Imagining a SLOW FILM movement
Submitted by Richard Leigh on 24 June 2008 - 11:38pm.You know about fast food.
Perhaps you also know about slow food.
Well, along with slow food came slow travel, slow shopping, and slow design.
I wonder if it's time to consider slow FILM.
The whole slow movement has been quietly ticking away for a while now.
In 1999, Geir Berthelsen formalised the movement with The World Institute of Slowness.
Professor Guttorm Fløistad summarises the philosophy of the slow movement like this: "The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal."
Fast shorts
Whether creating or viewing, we like our short films fast, or short, or both.
With faster tools to write, shoot and edit films, we naturally assume that producing quality films can happen faster.
For online viewers of short films, faster access to a greater number of films means that we’re swimming in choice, and we get impatient about the one we’re watching lest we miss something better that’s only a click away. But how do we take it all in? How can we appreciate so much?
That’s where we come in.
Campfire shorts
The Campfire Film Festival features just 5 short films at a time, allowing 3 months for viewers to absorb the small selection along with the broad range of responses from our key reviewers.
OK OK, I’d be lying if I were to say that a slowness philosophy was the only reason for going slow. There's also the reality that we're limited by lack of time and resources. But the more I think about expansion and improvement of what we do, the more I see the value in investing time and exposure in just a small number of select films. We want to do more than simply grow in the number of films we present, and the number of buttons and features on our site. Albert Einstein said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.”
And that’s the direction we want to head.
Bad for the image?
Take the time to watch the entirety of each of the short films we present. Take the time to read what people have said. Take time to smell the roses. Go slow. Life wasn’t meant to be so fast.
Of course, calling Campfire the ‘slow film festival’ sends the wrong message.
After all, what’s a slow film? Ponderous, tedious and dull? Quite possibly. But if ‘slow’ was a label that stuck to sum up our philosophy on film creation and appreciation, then I’d be only too happy about it.