Time, movement and urbanity: slow cinemas and the aesthetics of slowness as an experience of real urban living

Abstract

Entering the debate of urban imaginaries created by the cinematographic language, we seek to discuss the relationship between urban films of the Slow Cinemas trend and the discourse of “slow urban experience” that is built through this production. To this end, we chose to approach the principles of slowness that this trend incorporates with the existing debates in urban studies that theorize about “slow” practices in the city space as an experience of resistance to the commodification of urban life. The objective is to contribute to the debates on the historical formation of the image of the contemporary city, proposing to discuss the plural character that one has on the representations of city living, intersecting knowledge from the field of art, culture and urban studies. The hypothesis is that, through the city-cinema-spectator relationship, the slowness transcribed by the mobility of bodies in Slow Cinemas scales a contemplative apprehension of the urbanity represented in the filmic space. There is a similarity between the process of apprehending the film and the city represented, in order to constitute a slow territoriality that restores a sense of sensitive experience contrary to the temporalities of consumption. Therefore, in viewing the films, by recording the duration of the urban experience, a place for reflection on contemporary living is evoked.