Apr
10
|
Michael
Snow's La Région
Centrale (1971, 16mm, color/so, 180m)
In preparation for the visit of Michael Snow to Los Angeles during the
week of April 18-24, Filmforum is providing a rare opportunity to see
Snow’s three-hour classic on the big screen. Michael Snow will not
be present at this screening, but he will be present at the screening
on April 24.
"This three hour film by the Canadian Michael Snow is an extraordinary
cinematic monument. No physical action, not even the presence of man,
a fabulous game with nature and machine which puts into question our perceptions,
our mental habits, and in many respects renders moribund existing cinema:
the latest Fellini, Kubrick, Buñuel etc. For La Région
Centrale, Snow had a special camera apparatus constructed by a technician
in Montreal, an apparatus capable of moving in all directions: horizontally,
vertically, laterally or in a spiral. The film is one continuous movement
across space, intercutting occasionally the X serving as a point of reference
and permitting one to take hold of stable reality. Snow has chosen to
film a deserted region, without the least trace of human life, 100 miles
to the north of Sept-Isles in the province of Quebec: a sort of plateau
without trees, opening onto a vast circular prospect of the surrounding
mountains.
"In the first frames, the camera disengages itself slowly from the
ground in a circular movement. Progressively, the space fragments, vision
inverts in every sense, light everywhere dissolves appearance. We become
insensible accomplices to a sort of cosmic movement. A sound track, rigorously
synchronized, composed from the original sound which programmed the camera,
supplies a permanent counterpoint.
"Michael Snow pushes toward the absurd the essential nature of this
'seventh' art which is endlessly repeated as being above the visual. He
catapults us into the heart of a world before speech, before arbitrarily
composed meanings, even subject. He forces us to rethink not only cinema,
but our universe." - Louis Marcorelles, Le Monde
La Région isn’t only a documentary photographing
of a particular place at various times of the day but is equally and more
importantly a source of sensations, an ordering, an arranging of eye movements
and of inner ear movements. It starts out here, respecting the gravity
of our situation but it more and more sees as a planet does. Up downs
up, down ups down, up ups up. The first 30 minutes show us the four people
who have set the camera and machine in motion doing various things, talking,
looking, but after that we are gone and the remaining twp and a half hours
is entirely made by the machinery (you?). There are no other people but
you (the machinery?) and the extraordinary wilderness. Alone. Like a lot
of other humans I feel horror at the thought of the humanizing of the
entire planet. In this film I recorded the visit of some of our minds
and bodies and machinery to a wild place but I didn’t colonize it,
enslave it. I hardly even borrowed it. Seeing really is believing.
-- Michael Snow on La Région Centrale
Michael Snow will be appearing at several venues in Los Angeles
from April 19-24.
Tuesday April 19, 2005, 7:30 pm - Getty
Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Suspending Time: Sound and Image
Tony Conrad and Michael Snow In Person!
Preeminent Structural filmmakers Conrad and Snow appear in person following
a screening of their films to discuss how they have developed a cinematic
language utilizing motion, space and light, and the tensions of the fixed
frame. Getty Research Institute scholar in residence P. Adams Sitney will
moderate the discussion.
Films to be screened:
Michael Snow: WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time),
See You Later/Au Revoir, The Living Room
Tony Conrad: Duration
Wednesday April 20, 2005, 7:30 pm - Getty
Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Suspending Time: Sound and Image
Tony Conrad and Michael Snow In Concert!
Filmmakers Michael Snow and Tony Conrad are also accomplished musicians.
Snow has been developing his own improvisatory music, solo and in ensembles
since the 1960's. Conrad's compositions are executed in a minimalist style.
In conjunction with a screening of their film work, each will perform
a solo concert exploring aspects of "spontaneous composition"
and sonic environments.
Friday April 22 - UCLA
Film and Television Archive – James Bridges Theatre
Rameau's Nephew By Diderot (Thanx To Dennis Young) By Wilma Schoen
(1974, 285 minutes, 16mm) Scripted and Directed by Michael Snow. Shot
primarily in Toronto and New York by Snow, Keith Lock, Babette Mangolte,
David York and others.
"Until Rameau's Nephew... no one has exhibited a film that deals
so thoroughly with the range of perceptual problems elicited by the sound
cinema."
-- M. Keller, Chicago Film Centre
Sunday April 24 - Filmforum
presents Michael Snow at USC
|
|
