Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk · Broadcast
Nonstop — Slow TV
RoleProduction
WhereMultiple locations
DeliveredFilms of thirty minutes, no commentary
Whenongoing · one or two a year
ForLandscape long enough to settle into
MDR broadcasts them as Slow TV: half an hour of landscape and music, and nothing else. No commentary, no presenter, no cutting that hurries you along — films that invite you to stop for a moment and let the pictures work on their own.
One or two a year, and it has been going on for several years. Broadcast so far:
- Die Alpen — nonstop
- Bilderbuch Island nonstop — Land aus Feuer und Eis
- Madeira — Wo der Ozean die Berge formt
- Färöer — Europas Außenposten im Nordatlantik
- Norwegen nonstop — Die Farben des Nordens
- Burgen, Wälder, Nebelfelder — Thüringen nonstop
- Sächsische Schweiz — Wald, Stein, Fluss — nonstop
- Flusslinien — Die großen Radwege Mitteldeutschlands
Thirty minutes is a different craft
A three-minute film forgives a weak shot. Thirty minutes does not: whatever is wrong with a frame, the viewer has time to find it. That changes what you shoot and how long you wait for it — and it is the reason these were made in places I keep going back to rather than places I visited once.
Locations from the series, from my own archive — not frames from the films.
