I need your full attention, please.

Below, dearest reader, you will find a 2000-word summary of my 11,000-word University dissertation, that received an A+ grade from the University of Malta.

If you work in the arts, by the end of these 15 minutes you will come to understand the minimalist manifesto that I intuitively (and largely unconsciously) apply to all of my creative work. This manifesto comes out of a dissertation focused on film, but it can just as easily be applied to television, theatre, and the audiovisual arts at large.

If you don't have access to a free-flowing reserve of money to make your creative work, if you consistently find yourself working with restricted resources, if you yearn to make art but fear the logistical, financial and technical complexities that come alongside the process of creation - you must read this article.

No - despite my preachiness, there are no newsletters or sneaky subscriptions at the end of this article. In fact, if you want to jump directly to my full downloadable dissertation, click here.

If I still have your attention - let's start.

As a concept, minimalism has become rather banal. Indeed, so many different YouTubers, self-help books and spiritual gurus have exploited the term (mainly for monetary gain) by branding it as a way of bring one's self a step closer to 'enlightenment' through getting rid of the 'excess' in one's life.

Within the arts, this school of thought is too vague and diffuse to be applied. What might be 'excess' to some might not be to others. Contrastingly however, one finds that audiences swiftly come to a consensus when it comes to correctly identifying minimalist qualities within art.

I think we can all agree that monochromatic colour schemes are minimalistic. That a barren film set or theatre stage are minimalistic. That 'less' is minimalistic. But this way of approaching the topic is also reductive: to make minimalist art, should I just aim to tick all these boxes?

Enter Abbas Kiarostami.

Born in 1940 to a large family in Tehran, Iran, he would turn out to be one of the world's most masterful minimalists, employing minimalism within his graphic design, his poetry, his photography, his illustrations, his paintings - but above all and most ingeniously - in his films.

In my dissertation, I discussed his filmography through its 3 most salient sections: his early short films, his narrative feature-length films and his experimental feature-length films.

Ambitiously, I sought to answer 3 questions:

1. What is minimalism, and how can it be defined within the art form of film?
2. What makes Kiarostami's films minimalistic?
3. Which qualities make any film minimalistic?

For the second question, you'll have to read the dissertation through to truly understand. However, I'll save you the trouble by answering the first and the third questions here.

What is minimalism, and how can it be defined within the art form of film?

Cinematic minimalism shall be defined as an austere filmmaking style whereby elements of film language are employed with the intention of fostering cinematic voids. Such voids converge into unfinished films, which necessitate the audience's creative involvement in the shaping of their ultimate completion. The concept is best encapsulated by the words of Robert Bresson: “one does not create by adding, but by taking away”.

Let's break this paragraph down into it's parts.

1. Elements of film language refer to five key categories of film art that make up a film (not to be confused with logistic or financial considerations):

a. Narrative: the account of a string of events occurring in space and time, usually (but not necessarily) related to and causing one another and confined within a three act structure: setup, confrontation, resolution;

b. Mise-en-scène: that which is seen on screen, including set, props, costume, make-up, colour schemes, lighting, staging, performances and the general placement/application of these elements;

c. Cinematography: the way through which the mise-en-scène is captured, including the distance, angle, height and level of the camera from its subject(s), the movement of the camera (or lack thereof), the intentional use of lenses with varying focal lengths, and so forth;

d. Editing: the way through which what was filmed is pieced together to form a film, including shot transitions (or lack thereof) that are largely dictated and motivated by graphic, rhythmic, spatial and temporal relations;

e. Sound: the use (or lack thereof) of music, dialogue, sound effects and ambience to complement or otherwise alienate a film's visual aspect.

2. Cinematic voids is a self-coined term that refers to the intentional creation of aesthetic and logical blanks within a film, through the use of filmic gaps and omissions that are created via narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound.

a. The ultimate example of a cinematic void can be found in Kiarostami's Shirin (2008). We'll get to that a bit later.

3. 'Creative involvement' here refers to the audience's willing participation in the meaning-making of a film - not only during a viewing but also after it. To make the analogy: akin to an unfinished painting, a minimalist film (via film language) has unfinished spots on its canvas that entice the active viewer to paint them in. But beware, for the passive viewer will see nothing more than an unfinished painting.

With the theory explained, below are what I believe to be the practical rules (or tendencies - call them what you must) of minimalism in film. I'm lifting them off directly from my dissertation, because they cannot be minimised any further.

Minimalism in Narrative

Within a film’s narrative, qualities of cinematic minimalism collectively seek to enable the audience’s participation through the employment of a non-additive logic. Such logic entails the presentation of a non-narrative with a marked prevalence for non-action, told by small casts of non-professional actors with a tendency for inexpressive non-acting. The presented story is austere, usually opening in medias res and closing with an open-ending, and has the ability to be summarized within one simple short sentence. Exposition is typically withheld through little to no dialogue being employed, ensuring that the audience makes no emotional connections to the film’s characters. Realist elements, restricted locations and slow pacing are also commonly found. Superficial action (such as stunts, murders and explosions) intending to alienate the audience is forbidden, with techniques like fourth-wall breaks being conversely employed to expose the film’s creation. These narrative qualities are best realized within the experimental mode, and best experienced through theatrical viewing.

Minimalism in Mise-en-scène

Within a film’s mise-en-scène, visual austerity is most efficiently sought through black and white presentation, with colour only being realised as an alternative through a very limited palette. Restricted aspect ratios (such as the Academy ratio at 1.33:1) are favoured, with a tendency for plain, static and unpopulated compositions which emphasize negative and off-screen space. Natural lighting is also preferred, and all foreground elements within the frame – such as props and costume – should not draw attention to themselves, instead blending into the background.

Minimalism in Cinematography

Within a film’s cinematography, digital technology is favoured over its analogue counterpart, due to its better accessibility and relative efficiency in regards to setup and cost. Minimal coverage is preferred, with a single-camera setup being principally employed. Camera movement is generally eschewed, with a static camera only being excepted in instances where movement can contribute to the creation of greater cinematic voids. Heavy changes in shot types and framing are also generally avoided. Bazin’s concept of the democracy of the eye is the chief tenet of cinematographic minimalism, where the spectator’s eye is allowed to roam free and unrushed within the shot through the use of deep-focus photography and a flattened two-dimensional frame. This concept is best realised in long shot, but is also effective in other shot types as long as eye movement is not influenced through extreme depth of field or similar guiding techniques.

Minimalism in Editing

Within a film’s editing, temporal realism is generally adhered to through the creation of a continuous time-space, purporting to audiences that the film is occurring in real time or slower. As a rule, temporal and spatial ellipses are either eschewed or employed in service of opening logical gaps within a narrative. Long takes are most prevalent, with little to no cuts being employed to further accentuate frequent moments of temps mort (dead time). All edits must be unobtrusive and shall not seek to draw attention to themselves.

Minimalism in Sound

Within a film’s sound, minimalism is epitomised by the conception of acoustic silence delineated by Tabarraee (2012). Broken down into its five levels:

1. Language silence is when dialogue is obfuscated through thick dialects and accents;

2. Dialogue silence is when dialogue is omitted altogether;

3. Music silence is when the Bressonian concept of “no music as accompaniment, support or reinforcement” is employed (Bresson et al., 1976/2016, p. 16);

4. Partial silence is when noise creates the illusion of no sound being employed;

5. Complete silence is when no sound is employed altogether.

Finally, the acousmatic as conceptualised by Chion et al. (1994) bears mentioning, underscoring the minimalistic tendency for sound to occur off-screen when acoustic silence is eschewed.

That is as close of a blueprint to minimalist film as I believe exists on the open internet - compiled from hundreds of hours of procrastination gruelling research. But do not misinterpret it, for it is not a rigid formula to be followed to the letter, but rather a guide to inspire your own approach.

In my opinion, the most minimalistic film of all time is Shirin (2008). Shot in Kiarostami's living room with a cheap digital camera, the 92-minute film simply features close-ups of 100+ women in a cinema theatre watching a film.

The film features no narrative, no dialogue, no action... because the film is happening off-screen... and we're only able to watch the audience watch it.

Is it a good film? By my estimation, it's terrible, unless you're a Buddhist monk in training. And this is exactly what makes it the most minimalistic film of all time: it takes the concept of the cinematic void to the extreme by denying the audience of a film to watch, and using it's soundtrack to suggest a commercial mainstream film being screened, demanding a significant part on the spectator to 'finish' the film. If Shirin were to employ a minimalist soundtrack, the spectator’s role would arguably have less importance; little effort on their part would be required in 'finishing' the film.

Funnily enough, Kiarostami himself didn't know what film his audience were supposed to be watching during the shooting of the film... he only realised that the film would focus on the Persian tale of Khosrow and Shirin during the film's post-production. This detail is unimportant to further my argument - if you decide to watch Shirin without sound, you are literally watching an audience watch nothing. Any meaning-making you ascribe to the film would be entirely your own.

To come to a close (and keep my 2000-word limit promise to you), even Shirin, the film which I claim to be 'the most minimalistic of all time', breaks the same rules that it's supposed to abide by. But it breaks these rules expertly, and always in the service of creating even larger cinematic voids, in part demanding more creative involvement from its active audience.

By using these minimalist rules as a guide, or as Kiarostami puts it, by using “the minimum of means and the maximum of constraints”, as an artist you should find yourself more liberated when it comes to the artistic, technical, logistical and financial considerations that haunt your waking hours. This is not to say that minimalist art is easy and cheap to make; the opposite is true. But from a resource perspective, minimalist art turns the process of artmaking on its head: the focus is on what must be omitted, not on what must be added.

And as I explain at the start, this manifesto may also be applied to film-adjacent art forms like television and theatre. You'll find that just about everything I say here has its equivalent in other art forms.

Now, create.