An Antidote to Modern Life
Have you heard of Slow TV yet?
What is Slow TV? Essentially, it’s a broadcasting philosophy of real things happening in real time. We also call it Slow Film, and use the terms interchangably. One of our favourite things is to argue about whether it should be called Slow TV or Slow Film. Everyone needs a hobby…
If you’re new to Slow TV, you’re probably wondering what it is and what the fuss is about. Here, in a nutshell are some answers to those questions.
Slow TV is a way to bring some organic reality into your lives
Most TV and film is aggressively entertaining. Fast edits, scene changes, flash backs, flash forwards, dream sequences, fake endings and, above all, blowups and shootouts are staples on the normal menu. You will never see them in Slow TV. Why? Because Slow TV is the opposite of normal TV. It’s simply the depiction of life, the world and events in real time. What happens is there; what doesn’t, isn’t. It could be a tram ride across Prague. It could be he afternoon shift at a Melanesian button factory. It could be a field of cows doing their bovine thing. But whatever happens is going to happen in its own sweet time. It’s unhurried, like the Tai Chi of video media.
Why Would You Want to Watch Slow Films?
If you’re one of the zillions of urban dwellers for whom nature is a distant memory, Slow Films are a way to bring some organic reality into your lives. Opening a window into a sun dappled forest, or onto a shady green river is to invite peace and sanity into your home and into your heart. It can be meditative, an antidote to hectic modern lives, spreading a salve of beauty onto fractured urban nerves. Played on a big screen, a slow film becomes a sort of in-house art installation, a leisurely progression of images that forms a perfect backdrop to all kinds of gatherings. And because the world is a huge, huge place, constantly on the move and full of more kinds of everything than most of us can begin to imagine, there is an inexhaustible store of Slow Film subjects. Slow Films are films for the background and the foreground of your lives, depending on how you choose to use it.
Slow Films are films for the background and the foreground of your lives
We are kind of slow TV ourselves, in that we are always adding to this collection of films. It will never be finished. Feel free to poke around and see what we have to offer. We welcome all your film suggestions, and any comments you feel like sharing with us.
Filming on location at Oxtongue River – K eyeing up the tripod