Michael Snow’s Wavelength in 16mm + Standard Time + See You Later
A tribute to the great Canadian experimental filmmaker, including one of his most influential works with two lesser-screened shorts.
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Apr 30, 2023, 7:30 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
3 by Michael Snow: Wavelength + Standard Time + See You Later (Au revoir)
Co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum
We present a tribute to the Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow (1928-2022) with an all-16mm screening, including one of his most influential works with two lesser-seen shorts. An accomplished cross-disciplinary artist even before he came to cinema, Michael Snow was perhaps best known for his highly influential avant-garde films, which remain as brazenly conceptual as they are perceptual. After moving to New York City with his wife Joyce Wieland in the 1960s, the two were exposed to the burgeoning New American Cinema movement, where Snow became part of an emerging tradition of medium-specific and highly formalist approach to avant-garde cinema—often described as “structuralism”—and made a series of groundbreaking films that are still among the most widely discussed and debated in the American avant-garde. The act of watching Snow’s work is perhaps best described by P. Adams Sitney, who calls it the “discovery of a simple situation permeated by a rich field of philosophical implications, which duration elaborates". Yet Snow’s work also contains “a persistent undercurrent of humour that can range from dryly witty to pure slapstick” (Chris Kennedy).
16mm prints courtesy of Canyon Cinema. Special thanks to Chloe Reyes and Seth Mitter (Canyon Cinema).
WAVELENGTH
1967, 45m, 16mm, U.S.
“A singularly unpadded, uncomplicated, deadly realistic way to film three walls, a ceiling and a floor… It is probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence.” -Manny Farber
“The first post-Warhol, post-Minimal movie… A triumph of contemplative cinema.” -Gene Youngblood
“A stuttering 45-minute forward zoom across a Manhattan loft, in which a man’s death and the subsequent discovery of his corpse, both presented in sync sound, provide two of the on-screen events; an electronic sine wave moving steadily up a musical scale accompanies the camera’s journey.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum
preceded by:
STANDARD TIME
1967, 8m, 16mm, U.S.
“This is my home, wife, camera, radio, turtle movie. Circular and arc saccades and glances. Spacial, parallel sound.” –Michael Snow
SEE YOU LATER (AU REVOIR)
1990, 18m, 16mm, Canada
“In this work, Snow continues his study of the cinematic elements: Time and duration are made palpable. For him, film techniques and components are active protagonists, as they have been in ONE SECOND IN MONTREAL (1969) or with the zoom of WAVELENGTH (1967) and pan of LA RÉGION CENTRALE (1971). The idea for this film came to Snow as early as 1968, when he saw it complete in his mind, almost as a vision. It was the fortuitous offer of access to the Super Slo-Mo camera in 1990 that finally made its completion possible.” –Peggy Gale
Through our collaboration with LA Filmforum, this program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los
Angeles County Arts Commission, the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. Find them online at http://www.lafilmforum.org/.