Michael Snow

Entirely shot using a robotized camera set on the top of a mountain in the Canadian wilderness - in winter. The camera was mounted on a mechanical arm that could move in any direction (even upside down). Using instructions recorded on magnetic tape, the filmakers could control the arm's movement, creating short "routines" that had do be checked and programmed daily. During the entire movie the only sound heard are mechanical blips and electronic noises synchronized with the camera movement.

With his film Wavelength, Michael Snow revolutionized the international Avant-garde film scene like no other production. Viewed from its basic concept, this is a purely formal film: it consists of a single, 45-minute-long tracking shot through the length of a room, accompanied by slowly-increasing sine tones... (Medien Kunst Net)

The corpus callosum is a central region of tissue in the human brain which passes "messages" between the two hemispheres. *Corpus Callosum, the film (or tape, or projected light work), is constructed of, de-picts, creates, examines, presents, consists of, and is, "betweens." (netloungedv.de)

A camera moves back and forth at an increasing pace.

Camera moves forward towards a crammed breakfast table.

Panning shot of a room while a group of people discusses film while eating at a table.

Rameau's Nephew ... is built of twenty-five sequences, each with sound, each separated from its neighbors by twenty-seven abstract colour compositions. There is no narrative connection between the sequences, which vary in duration from 4 minutes to 55. (The Collected Writings of Michael Snow p. 104)

A collection of snow scenes, all still photographs of potential sites for a monument in Montreal (thus distinctly not 'artistic' photographs) follow, one another for 22 minutes. (P. Adams Sitney)

From the maker of the influential 'Wavelength', Presents is an investigation into representation, process and material and the nature of camera movement.

Snow returned to video with See You Later/Au revoir (1990), using super-slow motion to turn a simple 30-second action into an 18-minute meditation on time and cinematic motion. The film is a kind of prelude to Snow's next two films, which also treat cinematic material as poetic substance.

SO IS THIS parlays an elegantly simple concept into an unpredictable, cumulatively rich experience. The film is a text in which each shot is a single word, tightly-framed white letters against a black background.

An artist delivers a painting to his lover's apartment. He unwraps the painting, shows it to her. A sudden dispute develops and the painter smashes the painting over the head of the woman's husband. The painter exits, the wife/lover walks away. (Torino Film Fest)

In a series of tableaux, people perform everyday tasks -- sleeping, dining, reading, card-playing -- as the camera arcs past and over them. (Karagarga)

A series of pans and tilts in an appartment.

"Side Seat..." is a 20-minute sound film made in 1970 of the projecting and verbal (my voice) identification of slides (made at various times, by various people) of paintings in various media made by myself from 1955 to 1965. It is not autobiographical. The film is a recycling, a conversion which, by employing the illusion of temporal alteration that film and sound recording have made possible, becomes a completely new experience. (Michael Snow) (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre)

"You see nothing but a white, crystal white plate, and water dripping into the plate, from the ceiling, from high, and you hear the sound of the water dripping. The film is ten minutes long. I can imagine only St. Francis looking at a water plate and water dripping so lovingly, so respectfully, so serenely." (Jonas Mekas) (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre)

The waves and the sand on a beach are covering a cutout of a woman's silhouette while a free jazz background music is heard. The same jazz musicians will pose later for the camera in a studio or in the streets of New York. (imdb)

A shorter version of "Wavelength"

Curtains flap

Zooming back from an image in close-up a brightly coloured and kitschy room is revealed. Digitally manipulated objects and figures appear/disappear details and colours change in scale and intensity, sexes change. Michael Snow: The Living Room digitally dramatises and multiplies chosen manifestations and implications of On/Off and/or Absence/Presence. The Living Room is also part of the longer feature Corpus Collosum. (lux.org.uk)

The cityscape of downtown Toronto is shown through a variety of complex camera movements. (imdb)

A recording of some music from Puccini's "La Bohème" plays over a speaker, inter-cut with shots of flowers and wood-fires. (imdb)

A to Z is a cutout animation of tables and chairs attempting to mate with each other. The theme of tables and chairs recurs in several other works by Snow from this period. The crosshatch drawings of these objects in A to Z were influenced by the Expressionist style of Swiss-German artist Paul Klee. (vimeo.com)