Cinematic stilling: before and beyond the slowness of slow cinema

In this paper I consider instances of the moving image apparently becoming still in film-based cinema. I contrast these with what has been identified as 'slow cinema.' Slow cinema is said to encourage contemplation, however, I do not see the process of becoming still I invoke requires a viewer's protracted contemplation that slow cinema invites. Rather the stilling I identify can initiate an active reflection on the part of the viewer upon the relation of the becoming still of the moving image with a meta-image that a movie, containing such instances, offers in the context of other of its content, or even through references it makes outside of itself. I suggest that the technical relation of the photogram of the film frame to the very possibility and existence of film-based cinema has bearing on the moments in film when the moving image apparently undergoes stilling. I conclude by briefly contrasting the temporal shift of film-based stilling with the temporal malleability of digital cinema.