Toward a Cinema of Slow Violence

Llamas-Rodriguez develops a “cinema of slow violence” as a framework for apprehending and critically assessing depictions of violence in film about narcotrafficking. Extending Rob Nixon's conception of slow violence, a cinema of slow violence proposes an orientation towards figuring violence in forms that use the distinct medium affordances of cinema. The author contests Nixon's assumption that cinematic depictions of violence will necessarily be spectacular by analyzing cinematic depictions of slow violence in the film Heli. This is achieved through a focus on cinematic figurations that are not strictly representational but rather avisual or affective. A cinema of slow violence requires an ethical orientation towards acknowledging, or doing something with the knowledge of, slow violence within the phenomenon of narcotrafficking. A cinema of slow violence emerges from the orientation of the filmmaker, the critic, and the audience, as well as the interconnections between each of these.