Slow Moments
Sometimes the best way to enjoy a snowfall is from a window while sipping on a hot beverage. With that in mind, we invite you to slow down, settle in and embrace the stillness of the season with us as we premiere a new Slow Moments film* that explores a familiar Indiana landscape in winter: Cataract Falls.
The film, which we created in partnership with 12 Stars Media, captures the beauty and brightness that accompanies a fresh snowfall and the sounds of fast-moving water flowing over cliffs and around rocks. Like our Next Indiana Campfires series, our film uses excerpts from Indiana writers to encourage connections between nature and literature and to spark conversations about Indiana’s future.
Amid this fast-paced, overwhelming year, we invite you to slow down with us—even if you can spare only 10 minutes. So go ahead and pour your favorite beverage, light your fireplace or wrap up in a blanket, and take a few moments to wind down with us by watching the film below.
*Films produced using this style create a meditative, immersive escape by unfolding imagery in real time and enveloping the viewer with sound. They reward close attention but work equally well as soothing backgrounds.
Next Indiana Campfires Slow Moments
Discussion Prompts
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Pay attention to your own attentiveness. Is watching a slow film easy or hard? What makes it so? How does it subvert your normal experience of watching film?
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In each shot, choose an image or sound to follow closely. What is it? What do you notice the longer you watch or listen?
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Is there a scene that reminds you of a place you love? Where is that place? What do you do when you visit? Do you like to go there on your own or share it with others?
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Can you see or hear traces of humans in the film? How often do you notice human impact on nature? What actions do you take to counteract humans’ harmful effects on the environment?
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Edwin Way Teale describes a number of native Indiana tree varieties with vivid language. The most beautiful, he says, is the sycamore with “white, satiny branches twisting away from a trunk massive and mottled” (3:35). Using similarly vivid language and imagery, how would you describe the trees in your own yard or neighborhood?
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In Wandering Through Winter, Teale considers how the formation of ice provides “a kind of universal allegory” due to the way that it “builds up and disappears and builds up again” (4:30). What do you think he means by this? What might the formation of ice allegorize in your own life?
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In Rural Free, Rachel Peden gives careful instructions for making snow ice cream (7:08), and in so doing, evokes a kind of collective childhood memory through her use of second-person narration. What other memories do you have from childhood during winter? Are these experiences universal or particular? Taking Peden’s snow ice cream recipe as example, how would you instruct someone else to replicate a beloved childhood memory?
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What imagery or ideas from Teale’s Wandering Through Winter or Peden’s Rural Free struck you? Do you hear or see anything different in the film because of the texts or notice anything differently in the texts because of the film?
Feeling Inspired?
Create and share your own Slow Moment and upload to Instagram using hashtag #INSlowMoments.
About 12 Stars Media
12 Stars Media is a team of Indiana-based filmmakers who tell the stories of interesting characters who inspire communities to make positive changes.