Apr
24
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Three
films by Michael Snow
Filmforum presents Michael Snow in person at USC!
Co-sponsored
by USC School of Cinema-Television and Cinematheque 108. Please note the
change of location: this free screening will be at USC’s
Norris Theatre at 7:00 NOT at the Egyptian Theatre!
Filmforum is honored to host Michael Snow at this special screening, in
conjunction with a series of events in Los Angeles.
Wavelength (1966-1967, 16mm, color/sound, 45min)
A new print produced by the Academy Film Archives. Special thanks to Michael
Snow, Anthology Film Archives, the Getty Research Institute, the Academy
Film Archives, Mark Toscano, Rani Singh, and Canyon Cinema.
“Wavelength was shot in one week in December, 1966, preceded
by a year of notes, thoughts, mutterings. It was edited and first print
seen in May, 1967. I wanted to make a summation of my nervous system,
religious inklings, and aesthetic ideas. I was thinking of, planning for
a time monument in which the beauty and sadness of equivalence would be
celebrated, thinking of trying to make a definitive statement of pure
Film space and time, a balancing of "illusion" and "fact,"
all about seeing. The space starts at the camera's (spectator's) eye,
is in the air, then is on the screen, then is within the screen (the mind).
The film is a continuous zoom which takes 45 minutes to go from its widest
field to its smallest and final field. It was shot with a fixed camera
from one end of an 80 foot loft, shooting the other end, a row of windows
and the street .... The room (and the zoom) are interrupted by four human
events including a death. The sound on these occasions is sync sound,
music and speech, occurring simultaneously with an electronic sound, a
sine-wave .... It is a total glissando while the film is a crescendo and
a dispersed spectrum which attempts to utilize the gifts of both prophecy
and memory which only film and music have to offer.
– Michael Snow
Standard Time (1967, 16mm, color/sound, 8 min.)
“Less rigorous, more casual than most of his other films, Standard
Time is the DNA of two subsequent major works, <-----> (1968-69)
and La Région Centrale (1970). Among the major satisfactions
of this film are the pulsing fluctuating audibility of the sound (a radio
talk program about dance), creating an aural sense of near and far that
turns against and with the visual near and far of the continuous circular
pans (sometimes back and forth, sometimes up and down) imaging the Snow's
loft home and its domestic paraphernalia."
So Is This (1982, 16mm, b&w/silent, 45min.)
“A silent film of 45 minutes consisting of single words of this
“script” or “score” placed on the screen one by
one, one after another, for specific lengths of time…Several different
strategies were employed on timing words/passages of the film. Image quality
changes too, and the situation of an audience reading a film is a special
one, not to be duplicated by reading this.
-- Michael Snow
"With formalist belligerence, So Is This threatens to make
its viewers 'laugh cry and change society,' even promising to get 'confessional.'
Although the film does reflect Snow's personality - his Canadian-ness,
preference for humor over irony, obsession with art world chronology (who
did what first) - its only confession is the tacit acknowledgement that
he's sensitive to criticism. Snow takes full advantage of his film's system
of discourse to twit restless audiences. A lot of this is pretty funny
but So Is This is more than a series of gags. Snow manages to
defamiliarize both film and language, creating a kind of moving concrete
poetry while throwing a monkey wrench into a theoretical debate (is film
a language?) that has been going on sporadically for 60 years.
"If you let it, Snow's film stretches your definition of what film
is - that's cinema and So Is This."
-- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
Directions
to USC's Norris Theatre
Norris Theater is located on the USC campuse south of Jefferson Boulevard,
between Hoover and Vermont on the southeast corner of Childs Way and Trousdale
Parkway. Paid parking in lots P, M and V. Free parking can usually be
found at meters on Jefferson and Hoover on Sunday evenings.
Michael Snow will also be appearing at several venues in Los Angeles
April 19-22.
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
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