Sunday, 10 October, 2004 - 22:30

vespers3

Programme October 10th:
Michael Snow - Back and Forth (1968-69)
16mm, color, sound, 52 min.

"This neat, finely tuned, hypersensitive film examines the outside and inside of a banal prefab classroom, s70tares at an asymmetrical space so undistinguished that it's hard to believe the whole movie is confined to it, and has this neck-jerking camera gimmick that hits a wooden stop arm at each end of its swing. Basically it's a perpetual motion film that ingeniously builds a sculptural effect by insisting on time-motion to the point where the camera's swinging arcs and white wall field assume the hardness, the dimensions of a concrete beam.
"In such a hard, drilling work, the wooden clap sounds are a terrific invention, and, as much as any single element, create the sculpture. Seeming to thrust the image outward off the screen, these clap effects are timed like a metronome, sometimes occurring with torrential frequency."
- Manny Farber, Artforum, 1970

Michael Snow - Wavelength (1966-67)
16mm, color, sound, 45 min.

“(The soundtrack) 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
Michael Snow was born in 1929 in Toronto. He studied at the Ontario College of Art and had his first solo exhibition in 1957. Since then his work has appeared at exhibitions in every major art centre in Europe and North America, and his films have been shown at retrospectives and film festivals in the United States, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Austria and Italy.