Program:
STANDARD TIME by Michael Snow
8:20min. / 1967 / sound / colour
"In Snow's ‘Standard Time’
a waist-high camera shuttles back and forth, goes up and down, picking
up small, elegantly-lighted square effects around a living room very
much like its owner: ordered but not prissy. A joyously spiritual little
film, it contains both his singular stoicism and the germinal ideas of
his other films, each one like a thesis, proposing a particular
relationship between image, time and space.” - Manny Farber, Art Forum
<-> (Back and Forth) by Michael Snow
52 min. / 1969 /sound / colour
Experimental
Canadian film, Snow’s classic Back and Forth (<->), in which the
various movements of a camera pan take on multiple meanings, uses, and
identities, including the sculptural.
"... his
sternest film, titled with a sign for back and forth motion. A
specially rigged camera swings right-left, left-right, before a homely,
sterile classroom wall, then accelerates into an unbearable blur (the
same frenzied scramble, as though the whole creative process was going
berserk, that occurs three quarters of the way through ‘Abbey Road’)...
In such a hard, drilling work, the wooden clap sounds are a terrific
invention and, as much as any single element, created the sculpture.
Seeming to thrust the image off the screen, these clap effects are timed
like a metronome, sometimes occurring with torrential frequency." -
Manny Farber, Art Forum
"Not
only did ‘Back and Forth’ expand the possibilities of cinematic framing
as postulated in ‘Wavelength’; it actually expanded the parameters of
movie narrative as we'd previously recognized them, expanded them even
beyond Godard's bold effects in such films as ‘Weekend.’ For in ‘Back
and Forth,’ Snow was able to completely suffuse form with content, while
not relinquishing the traditional elements of characterization and
acting. The relentless back and forth pan stresses similar concepts
which Snow had engaged in his sculptures and carries still further the
experiments with perception and illusion which began in ‘Wavelength.’" -
Gene Youngblood, L.A. Free Press
CAT FOOD by Joyce Wieland,
3:30 min. / 1967 / sound / color
“In
Catfood Wieland shows a cat devouring fish after fish for some ten
minutes. There seems to be no repetition of shots, but the imagery is so
consistent throughout–shot of the fish, the cat eating, his paw
clawing, another fish, the cat eating, etc.–that it is just possible the
shots are recurrent. There is no question that Wieland has a unique
talent.”- P. Adams Sitney
