Slow Love Podcast Co-host Lisa Portolan Film Event [repack] -
Here’s a feature-style piece covering , co-host of the Slow Love podcast, and her recent film event. Title: Slow Love, Fast Frames: Lisa Portolan Brings Intimacy Studies to the Silver Screen
The evening featured three short films from Australian female directors, each exploring a different facet of modern intimacy: the anxiety of the unanswered text, the choreography of a first kiss after a dating-app match, and the quiet dissolution of a marriage not with a bang, but with a series of ignored notifications.
The event, held at the intimate Ritz Cinema in Randwick, sold out within 48 hours—a testament to Portolan’s growing influence beyond academia. “We talk about slow love as a practice: being present, vulnerable, and intentional,” Portolan told the audience before the screening. “But words only go so far. Cinema forces you to sit with discomfort, with silence, with the pause. And the pause is where slow love lives.” slow love podcast co-host lisa portolan film event
As the night wound down, Portolan was surrounded by a small crowd of fans, many clutching dog-eared copies of her book The Joy of Missing Out . When asked if this film event would become a recurring feature, she smiled. “If slow love teaches you anything, it’s not to rush the sequel. Let the credits roll. Sit with it. We’ll see.”
The emotional core of the night came during the Q&A, when an audience member asked whether slow love is a privilege reserved for those not exhausted by economic precarity. Portolan’s response was characteristically nuanced. “That’s the question,” she admitted. “Slow love isn’t about having endless time. It’s about a qualitative shift—choosing depth over data points. It’s harder when you’re tired. But it’s also when you need it most.” Here’s a feature-style piece covering , co-host of
For now, Slow Love continues its weekly podcast run—but Portolan has clearly signaled that her lens is widening. From ear to eye, from swipe to stillness, she’s documenting not just how we date, but how we dare to linger.
Portolan, dressed in a sage-green suit (deliberately unflashy, she later noted, to keep focus on the stories), didn’t just host—she contextualized. Between films, she drew direct lines from the screen to the Slow Love podcast’s most downloaded episodes: “The Art of the Late Reply,” “Digital Afterglow,” and “Why We Miss the Landline.” “We talk about slow love as a practice:
Co-host and Slow Love producer, [Name], who was in the audience, described Portolan as “a translator between the heart and the Wi-Fi signal.” The film event, he added, was “Lisa’s thesis made tactile—proof that you can critique dating apps without demonizing them, and that romance isn’t dead, just on do-not-disturb.”