SLOW CINEMA WEEKEND

Thu 8 March – Sun 11 March

Over this special weekend we welcome some of the world’s leading filmmakers to Tyneside Cinema and Star & Shadow Cinema to screen and discuss their rarely seen work, including Lav Diaz, Fred Kelemen, Lisandro Alonso and Ben Rivers. The Slow Cinema Weekend Pass enables you to see all the films screened over this weekend, including 12 films and a panel discussion, totalling over 30 hours of film! It also includes refreshments and a meal with the artist for the special 8 hour screening of the Lav Diaz film Melancholia.

Slow Cinema Weekend: Lav Diaz

Internationally celebrated as “the ideological father of the New Philippine Cinema”. Diaz has created one of the most compelling bodies of work in contemporary cinema. Peopled by outsiders – failed revolutionaries, filmmakers, artists, criminals and cult members – his work explores society from the margins and the traumatic post-colonial history of South-East Asia. This UK debut focuses on recent work, including work in progress and Century of Birthing, which premiered at Venice in 2011. Diaz is present throughout the weekend for discussion with curator George Clark and critic May Adadol Ingawanij. 

Slow Cinema Weekend: Fred Kelemen

One of the boldest German filmmakers of the last 20-years, critic Susan Sontag compared Kelemen’s “urgently relevant” work to Andrei Sokurov and collaborator Bela Tarr. We are showing his famous and rarely seen 1990s trilogy – Fate, Frost and Nightfall. Set amongst Europe’s late-capitalist underclass of the unemployed and dispossessed, he captures nocturnal urban low-life with beauty. Kelemen is present throughout the weekend to introduce and discuss his work, in conversation with film critic Jonathan Romney. Kelemen will also introduce the regional preview of Bela Tarr’s last film The Turin Horse. 

Slow Cinema Weekend: Lisandro Alonso

One of the most accomplished and original Argentine artists working in contemporary Latin American cinema, Alonso combines fiction and documentary techniques to create meditative, mysteriously atmospheric films. Each film follows a solitary man, signifying a larger journey or inner quest, within exquisite natural landscapes shot on 35mm. Working with non-actors from rural communities, the slow rhythm of everyday life is distinctive and mesmerising. Alonso is present throughout the weekend to introduce and discuss his work, including his incredible debut feature La Libertad and recent work Liverpool.

Slow Cinema Weekend: Ben Rivers

Rivers is one of the most distinctive UK filmmakers working today. His films focus on marginal places and individuals, often those who have disconnected from the normal world and taken themselves into wilderness territories. Using an old handheld 16mm camera and film stock, he meticulously processes the work himself. Crossing the boundaries of gallery and cinema presentation, and between documentary and fiction, his work imagines alternative visionary new worlds. Rivers is present throughout the weekend to introduce and discuss his work, including his 2011 debut feature Two Years At Sea.