About Slow Media
-Gregory Coyes
The Slow Media style and ethos is built on the principles of an unhurried approach to thoughtful, well composed images of the earth that capture the power and beauty of nature in real time. It all began back in May, 2000 on Cortes Island at the Media That Matters conference when I was first introduced to a Panasonic high definition video camera with shots of the surrounding north Pacific coastal forest. I recognized, almost immediately, that the clarity and resolution of the HD images was having an unprecedented effect. The increase from 480 to 1080 vertical lines of visual information was creating a media experience of the forest that was unprecedented on a small screen. I remember having an emotional reaction to the images on the screen in the conference room, as were many of the other participants.
This innovation of HD cameras was almost immediately employed by a number of Indigenous feature filmmakers, most notably, Zacharius Kunuk and Warwick Thorton. They began featuring their homelands, the ice and tundra of the Arctic and the desert outback of Australia, in their internationally recognized narratives. These environments began to emerge as grounding and very powerful characters in their films through the use of unusually long shots. I recognized this trend and it became an early focus of my Masters studies on Indigenous film and my resulting thesis at UBC. It was soon after that I began the practice of Slow Media – decolonized media.
This is my invitation: Let’s take back the beauty and power of cinema from the corporate elite and begin applying that in nurturing ways for ourselves, for the people that we love, and the people in our communities that need it. These are Elders and shut-ins that cannot get out into the world.
What’s your window on the world?
