Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm
Programmed by: Joshua Wagner, Oliver Hunter Willke
Michael Snow (1928-2023) was a structuralist avant-garde filmmaker, pianist, sculptor, and painter, known for work exploring the possibilities of space within frame. Whether engaging with image in a static shot or enacting constant, smooth movement, the kineticism of his experiments invites the viewer to peer beyond the known confines of the medium and beyond the confines of sensation itself. Sometimes purposefully amateurish or gimmicky, these structuralist films linger on their own absurdity.
Snow's films assert views into worlds within our direct eyeline that are often missed, glanced over, not considered, or are difficult to enter. Investigations in motion and movement, between reality and fiction. Snow's work is essential theater viewing, unable to be recreated at home. The experiential immersion of his films – their playfulness and humor – are a genre unto themselves.
"Corpus Callosum (2002)
Michael Snow · 92m · 16mm
A vaudeville romp into office life that moves more slowly than your mind can even process. Mini-DV foreshortening and plasmatic digital editing eagerly meld this into the “least neurotic experimental film about technology imaginable,” in the words of critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Your brain’s corpus callosum might no longer house your soul, but it will at least be activated by this screening.
Sunday, January 12th 7:00 PM
La Région Centrale (1971)
Michael Snow · 180m · 16mm
A camera fixed to a gyroscopic machine arm is left alone for three hours on a Canadian mountaintop, turning to programmed musical commands. As the camera contorts with and through space, what’s in front of and around it begins to appear. La Région Centrale was rarely screened until new prints were struck in the early 2000s. Chantal Akerman famously spent an entire day watching it on a loop.
Sunday, January 19th 6:00 PM
So is This / Side Seat Paintings Slides Sound Film (1982 / 1970)
Michael Snow · 49m / 20m · 16mm
A film delivered one word at a time, So Is This proceeds at either a maddening or loving speed, depending on your mood. An orgy of reading, or Snow’s consciousness delivered into your skull. Paired with Side Seat Paintings Slides Sound Film, the art history seminar you never took. A walk through a Canadian art gallery with Snow, replete with painting identification, still images, and distortions you’ll only discover in the theater.
Sunday, January 26th 7:00 PM
Back and Forth <---> / One Second in Montreal (1969 / 1969)
Michael Snow · 52m / 18m · 16mm
In a grade school classroom, first we look back, and then forth, and then back again... With no consistency in character, plot, image, or sensation, Back and Forth is a superposition of all of Snow’s films bundled into one, a phantasmagoric horror. One Second is actually 1,037 seconds of still photographs from Montreal. Searching for purpose and pattern among the images, advance location scouting for a monument, yet with no sense of scale.
Sunday, February 2nd 7:00 PM
Breakfast (Table Top Dolly) / Wavelength (1976 / 1967)
Michael Snow · 15m / 45m · 16mm
Capitalism, Tropicana, and the most important meal of the day await in this filmed still life. The camera zooms, meddling in the production of its own image; what is captured is also undone. In Wavelength, a loft space is shot from a fixed camera angle with an extended zoom. Often cited as one of the greatest avant-garde films ever made and a defining structuralist work, Wavelength operates on a frequency all its own.
Sunday, February 9th 7:00 PM
Sshtoorrty / New York Eye and Ear Control (2005 / 1964)
Michael Snow · 20m / 35m · 35mm / 16mm
A loop of two scenes from a film about adultery and painting superimposed on top of each other. Lines, shapes, and figures shift into one transcendent structure. Described by Snow as “a ‘painting’ about a painting.” Paired with N.Y. Ear and Eye Control: Waves, foliage along a coast, buildings among a cityscape display and obscure a woman’s silhouette, accompanied by an improvised ensemble jazz album of the same name lead by saxophonist Albert Ayler.
Sunday, February 16th 7:00 PM
To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror / See You Later/Au Revoir (1991 / 1990)
Michael Snow · 52m / 19m · 16mm
An ode to Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), a French chemist who gave the first accurate scientific explanation of fire. A collaboration between Michael Snow and Carl Brown, the film itself is chemically altered and composed of a series of tableaux of everyday tasks.
Sunday, February 23rd 7:00 PM
Presents (1981)
Michael Snow · 99m · 16mm
Three examinations of our relation to the present.
Sunday, March 2nd 7:00 PM
Seated Figures / The Living Room (1988 / 2001)
Michael Snow · 42m / 20m · 16mm
In Seated Figures, a camera is fixed to the rear of a pickup truck and aimed downwards. As the truck drives over different terrain at different speeds, a variety of textures flow forth. The Living Room excerpts from *Corpus Callosum, in which a family occupies a garishly-colored living room as things around them disappear and reappear and their bodies morph and reconfigure.
