Michael Snow
Michael Snow was considered one of Canada's most important artists, and one of the world's leading experimental filmmakers. His wide-ranging and multidisciplinary oeuvre explored the possibilities inherent in different mediums and genres, and encompassed film and video, painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and music. Snow's practice comprised a thorough investigation into the nature of perception. While Snow early established himself as a successful painter and musician in his native Toronto, it was his 1962 move to New York City that marked the beginning of his rise to international prominence. He entered into a long-lasting and fruitful dialogue with downtown Manhattan's artistic avant garde, exchanging ideas with figures such as Yvonne Rainer, Philip Glass, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Foreman, and developing of some of his most ambitious and influential works to date. His 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control documents his growing involvement with the burgeoning free jazz movement, and the soundtrack boasts a lineup that includes Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, and Sonny Murray. Snow would continue to pursue improvised music, both on his own and in ensembles such as Toronto's CCMC. The generation and reception of sound in the broader sense emerged as one of his main concerns, reflected in performance and tape works that share qualities with contemporaneous experiments by composers like Steve Reich. At the same time, Snow made alliances within the underground film scene ...
Cityscape (2019)
Cityscape elaborates on the methods Snow used in the making of his ground-breaking 360-degree film La Région Centrale (1971). Taking the advice of his long-time friend, Graeme Ferguson, to produce it as an Imax film, Snow orchestrates new patterns of movement that ... (more)
Cityscape elaborates on the methods Snow used in the making of his ground-breaking 360-degree film La Région Centrale (1971). Taking the advice of his long-time friend, Graeme Ferguson, to produce it as an Imax film, Snow orchestrates new patterns of movement that ... (more)
Toronto Jazz (1963)
Short Shave (1965)
"Vanity. Had a beard. Appearance (looks). Looking. Disappearance act. Hand-made fades and zooms but camera made shave. Camerazor. Handsome. Tired. Walking Woman. My worst film." (more)
"Vanity. Had a beard. Appearance (looks). Looking. Disappearance act. Hand-made fades and zooms but camera made shave. Camerazor. Handsome. Tired. Walking Woman. My worst film." (more)
Presents (1981)
The apparent vertical scratch in celluloid that opens Presents literally opens into a film within the film. When its figure awakens into a woman in a 'real' unreal set, the slapstick satire of structural film begins. It is not the camera that moves, but the whole ... (more)
The apparent vertical scratch in celluloid that opens Presents literally opens into a film within the film. When its figure awakens into a woman in a 'real' unreal set, the slapstick satire of structural film begins. It is not the camera that moves, but the whole ... (more)
See You Later (1990)
The action depicted here is simplicity itself; a man (Snow himself) rises from his desk, puts on his coat, says goodbye to a woman typing at a nearby desk, and leaves the room. But what took a mere 30 seconds in ‘real’ time had been recorded with a Super Slo-Mo ... (more)
The action depicted here is simplicity itself; a man (Snow himself) rises from his desk, puts on his coat, says goodbye to a woman typing at a nearby desk, and leaves the room. But what took a mere 30 seconds in ‘real’ time had been recorded with a Super Slo-Mo ... (more)
To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991)
To Lavoisier Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991) is a collaboration with filmmaker Carl Brown, who specializes in homebrewed chemical film development. In a series of tableaux, people perform everyday tasks — sleeping, dining, reading, card-playing — as the ... (more)
To Lavoisier Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991) is a collaboration with filmmaker Carl Brown, who specializes in homebrewed chemical film development. In a series of tableaux, people perform everyday tasks — sleeping, dining, reading, card-playing — as the ... (more)
Michael Snow Up Close (1996)
MICHAEL SNOW UP CLOSE was produced on the occasion of The Michael Snow Project, a major, career-spanning, multi-venue retrospective of the artist. The documentary celebrates the multi-faceted shape of Snow's creative genius, including glimpses of his work in ... (more)
MICHAEL SNOW UP CLOSE was produced on the occasion of The Michael Snow Project, a major, career-spanning, multi-venue retrospective of the artist. The documentary celebrates the multi-faceted shape of Snow's creative genius, including glimpses of his work in ... (more)
Birth of a Nation (1997)
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades. (more)
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades. (more)
The Living Room (2000)
Zooming back from an image in close-up a brightly colored and kitschy room is revealed. Digitally manipulated objects and figures appear/disappear, details and colors change in scale, and intensity, sexes change. The Living Room digitally dramatizes and multiplies ... (more)
Zooming back from an image in close-up a brightly colored and kitschy room is revealed. Digitally manipulated objects and figures appear/disappear, details and colors change in scale, and intensity, sexes change. The Living Room digitally dramatizes and multiplies ... (more)
Solar Breath (2002)
Solar Breath (2002) is a 62-minute loop of fluttering curtains that reveal and conceal an idyllic landscape in rural Newfoundland. (more)
Solar Breath (2002) is a 62-minute loop of fluttering curtains that reveal and conceal an idyllic landscape in rural Newfoundland. (more)
Sshtoorrty (2005)
Playing painterly form with and against story-telling form, this Short Story is a loop that depicts a loop and is itself looped. (more)
Playing painterly form with and against story-telling form, this Short Story is a loop that depicts a loop and is itself looped. (more)
Reverberlin (2006)
Using concert footage of the free-improvisation ensemble he co-founded in 1974, Snow digitally weaves together images and sounds from performances that have taken place across the globe. 'I desired an equivalence of seeing and hearing so that one could actually ... (more)
Using concert footage of the free-improvisation ensemble he co-founded in 1974, Snow digitally weaves together images and sounds from performances that have taken place across the globe. 'I desired an equivalence of seeing and hearing so that one could actually ... (more)
Snow In Vienna (2013)
World renowned artist and filmmaker Michael Snow continues to push the boundaries of yet another field, music. The avant-garde greats mastery of free-improvisation shines through in this rare solo piano performance at Konzerthaus, Vienna. (more)
World renowned artist and filmmaker Michael Snow continues to push the boundaries of yet another field, music. The avant-garde greats mastery of free-improvisation shines through in this rare solo piano performance at Konzerthaus, Vienna. (more)
A to Z (1956)
A cross-hatched family fantasy about nocturnal furniture love. Two chairs fuck. (more)
A cross-hatched family fantasy about nocturnal furniture love. Two chairs fuck. (more)
Manual of Arms
(1966)
In this "fourteen-part drill for the camera," Frampton created a portrait gallery of his art-world friends engaging in a variety of ordinary activities. (more)
In this "fourteen-part drill for the camera," Frampton created a portrait gallery of his art-world friends engaging in a variety of ordinary activities. (more)
Bill's Hat (1967)
"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland. (more)
"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland. (more)
For Life, Against the War (1967)
First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the ... (more)
First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the ... (more)
Standard Time (1967)
Experimental short in which a camera pans quickly in a small apartment space; Disembodied voices speak of audience engagement. (more)
Experimental short in which a camera pans quickly in a small apartment space; Disembodied voices speak of audience engagement. (more)
Snowblind (1968)
"Homage to Michael Snow's environmental sculpture 'Blind.' The film proposes analogies, in imitation of three historic montage styles, for three perceptual modes mimed by that work." -HF (more)
"Homage to Michael Snow's environmental sculpture 'Blind.' The film proposes analogies, in imitation of three historic montage styles, for three perceptual modes mimed by that work." -HF (more)
Dripping Water (1969)
You see nothing but a white, crystal white plate, and water dripping into the plate, and you hear the sound of the water dripping. The film is ten minutes long. (more)
You see nothing but a white, crystal white plate, and water dripping into the plate, and you hear the sound of the water dripping. The film is ten minutes long. (more)