Kiyoshi Kurosawa: The Slow-Burn Clock

Slow does not mean static. In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films, the decisive change can be as slight as a question repeated in a different tone, but it alters who controls the room and what the audience expects from it.

For the final session of our first Director Series programme, Sammy Holden will use the encounter between Takabe and Mamiya in Cure. The scene builds through repetition, minimal cutting and the sound of dripping water, allowing control to pass between the two men without a conventional burst of action. We will mark each shift as it happens and look at how long Kurosawa lets us sit with it.

The practical work treats time as part of the writing. Each group will plan a 90-second scene around one character in one location, setting out six beats on an A3 timeline and deciding how many seconds each should last. Every beat must change what…