Akademik

n.

A movie genre that features slow pacing, minimalist scenes, long takes, and a focus on details and mood rather than narrative.

—slow-cinema adj.

The burning touch paper in this case was a piece in cinephile glossy Sight and Sound about the merits of what has become known semi-affectionately as "slow cinema" — the wilfully drama-lite strain of meditative and minimalist film that's become a staple diet for a chunk of the festival circuit in recent years.

—Danny Leigh, " The view: Is it OK to be a film philistine?: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/may/21/film-philistine," The Guardian, May 21, 2010

It may indeed be a "generational" thing as far as age is concerned, but I tend to think it's more about a certain sensibility, in the same way that "slow cinema" came under fire not long ago.

—Peter Martin, " Scott Pilgrim' vs. Ageism?: http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/08/13/scott-pilgrim-vs-ageism/," Cinematical, August 13, 2010

"Gerry" Gus Van Sant's experiment in "slow cinema" drove people into fury and ecstasy, with almost nobody standing in the middle. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck wander lost in a desert, while Van Sant and a minuscule crew stage long, quiet, gorgeous, patience-testing shots.

—Shawn Levy, "Sundance: The Big Picture," Newhouse News Service, January 18, 2002

Here are a couple of earlier citations that use slow cinema "naturally," rather than as a term of art:

At the heart of the brouhaha was the movie's unusual content. The main character is a provincial French policeman trying to solve the horrifying murder of a young girl. His investigation is drawn out over 2-1/2 hours of aggressively slow cinema, culminating in a deliberately ambiguous ending that suggests the stubbornness of human sin and the possibility of spiritual transcendence.

—David Sterritt, "Disputed drama leads Cannes quest in US," Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 2000

Commissioned by the university after a national competition, and completed with assistance from Western Metal Fabricators of Lethbridge, this large, powerful 1982 assembly of steel wolves and a dog, a portal and a dramatic landscape profile, has been described by the artist as "a kind of slow cinema."

—John Bentley Mays, "Steel's dual nature stars in 'a kind of slow cinema'," The Globe and Mail, August 4, 1984