Stemple Pass

A challenging, yet perception-sharpening serial-killer film.

“Where can I go now for peace and quiet?” asks Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski in James Benning’s monotone voice-over, in his undeniably challenging yet thrillingly suspenseful quartet of static shots of a cabin in a natural setting in Stemple Pass (2012). This is part of the Two Cabins art project, which also includes a film featuring texts by Henry Thoreau, Concord Woods (2014). The film crackles with static electricity through texts by Theodore J. Kaczynski (used without permission): early diaries (1971/72), a hidden package (1977/79), two decoded notebooks (1985), the manifesto (1995) and a prison interview (2001). Together, they portray the chilling inner and outer transformation from poetic praise of nature and remorseful squirrel-shooting to aggressive hatred of culture and technology and bomb killings: “I hate the technological society, because it deprives me of personal autonomy”.

Few films are as challenging, but Benning (speaking to Sight & Sound) rejects the label “slow cinema”: “I always believe that any learning comes through concentration and patience, and that you have to train yourself to have that patience and to perceive. That isn’t slow to me, that’s hard work”. The screening will demonstrate the value of concentration and patience: cinematic stillness is not slow. Only cinematic movement can be slow. Stillness is hard work. And viewers willing to invest their attention will get an immense amount in return.

Introduction to the screening on 15 December

Jon Inge Faldalen, professor at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, published the two-volume work “Stillmoving” this year, analysing and discussing the use of static shots in film. “The most significant innovation here is the concept of ‘stillmoving’, which also forms the title of the two books,” writes Eirik Frisvold Hanssen in his review in Norsk medietidsskrift (https://www.scup.com/doi/10.18261/nmt.33.1.5). “The combination of ‘still’ and ‘moving’, without a space, is a linguistic and typographic manifestation of the book’s main thesis: stillness and movement should not primarily be understood as opposites, but as qualities that coexist naturally and indivisibly in the medium of film. Stillness has usually been described in negative terms, as interruption, opposition, an absence of movement, Faldalen argues; here, the aim instead is to establish a precise vocabulary for stillness in positive terms, as something present and enduring.”

Jon Inge Faldalen will introduce the screening of Stemple Pass on Tuesday 15 December at 18:15.