Minimalist cinema is related to the art and philosophy of minimalism.
In film, minimalism usually is associated with filmmakers such as Robert Bresson, Chantal Akerman, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Yasujirō Ozu. Their films typically tell a simple story with straightforward camera usage and minimal use of score. Paul Schrader named their kind of cinema: "transcendental cinema". [1] In the present, a commitment to minimalist filmmaking can be seen in film movements such as Dogme 95, mumblecore, and the Romanian New Wave. Abbas Kiarostami, [2] Elia Suleiman, [3] and Kelly Reichardt are also considered minimalist filmmakers.
The Minimalists – Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus, and Matt D'Avella – directed and produced the film Minimalism: A Documentary, [4] which showcased the idea of minimal living in the modern world.
This type of film includes the works of directors like:
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In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in Western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-minimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives. Minimalism's key objectives were to strip away conventional characterizations of art through bringing the importance of the object or the experience a viewer has for the object with minimal mediation from the artist.Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt and Frank Stella.
Robert Bresson was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film. Much of his work is known for being tragic in story and nature.
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most prominent themes of Ozu's work are family and marriage, and especially the relationships between generations. His most widely beloved films include Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Story (1953) and An Autumn Afternoon (1962).
Aki Olavi Kaurismäki is a Finnish film director and screenwriter. He is best known for the award-winning Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002), Le Havre (2011), The Other Side of Hope (2017) and Fallen Leaves (2023), as well as Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989). He has been described as Finland's best-known film director.
Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
Taste of Cherry is a 1997 Iranian minimalist drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Abbas Kiarostami, and starring Homayoun Ershadi as a middle-aged Tehran man who drives through a city suburb in search of someone willing to carry out the task of burying him after he commits suicide. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, which it shared with The Eel.
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism. Key figures are Jesse Richards and Peter Rinaldi.
Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s. A related movement developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Iranian New Wave refers to a movement in Iranian cinema. It started in 1964 with Hajir Darioush's second film Serpent's Skin, which was based on D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover featuring Fakhri Khorvash and Jamshid Mashayekhi. Darioush's two important early social documentaries But Problems Arose in 1965, dealing with the cultural alienation of the Iranian youth, and Face 75, a critical look at the westernization of the rural culture, which was a prizewinner at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival, also contributed significantly to the establishment of the New Wave. In 1968, after the release of Shohare Ahoo Khanoom directed by Davoud Mollapour, The Cow directed by Dariush Mehrjui followed by Masoud Kimiai's Qeysar in 1969, Nasser Taqvai's Tranquility in the Presence of Others, and immediately followed by Bahram Beyzai's Downpour, the New Wave became well established as a prominent cultural, dynamic and intellectual trend. The Iranian viewer became discriminating, encouraging the new trend to prosper and develop.
The Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami is known for uses of certain themes and cinematic techniques that are instantly recognizable in his work, from the use of child protagonists and stories that take place in rural villages, to conversations that unfold inside cars utilizing stationary mounted cameras. He often undertook a documentary style of filmmaking within narrative works, and frequently employs contemporary Iranian poetry in dialogue, movie titles, and in the thematic elements of his pictures.
Richard Peña is a Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia University School of The Arts. He was formerly program director of Film at Lincoln Center, organizers of the New York Film Festival and the New Directors/New Films Festival.
Kelly Reichardt is an American film director and screenwriter. She is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities.
Slow cinema is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist, observational, and with little or no narrative, and which typically emphasizes long takes. It is sometimes called "contemplative cinema".
Maximalist film or maximalist cinema is related to the art and philosophy of maximalism.
Arthouse science fiction is a combination of art and science fiction cinema.
The "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" is a list published every ten years by Sight and Sound according to worldwide opinion polls they conduct. They published the critics' list, based on 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics, and the directors' list, based on 480 directors and filmmakers. Sight and Sound, published by the British Film Institute, has conducted a poll of the greatest films every 10 years since 1952.