A meditation piece. Close-up of cherries being pitted. Action seen again. Itself seen. “… (this film) utilizes the static camera, but the effect of the exact and consecutive repetitions of the same gesture – a cherry being pitted by a knife-wielding hand – proves here to be an astonishing performance and not just the constrained repeating of the same act.” – Michel Larouche, Parachute #28, 1982
Filter Films
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This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for “close-up” of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.
Stellar
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Those sensual machines, steam tractors, reveal a remarkable ability to perform to music.
Steam Ballet
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A playful, improvisational line animation, “Starcycle” follows the birth, death, and rebirth of a star which can transform itself into everything from a television set to fireworks. The soundtrack, composed of children’s reactions to the visuals, creates a participatory atmosphere for the audience.
Starcycle
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The “STAR,” as it is singular, is the sun; and it is metaphored, at the beginning of this film, by the projector anyone uses to show it forth. Then the imaginary sun begins its course throughout whatever darkened room this film is seen within. At “high noon” (of the narrative) it can be imagined as if in back of the screen. Then it can be seen to shift its thought-light gradually back thru aftertones and imaginings of the “stars” of the film until it achieves a one-to-one relationship with moon again. This “sun” of the mind’s eye of every viewer does only occasionally correspond with the off-screen “pictured sun” of the film; and anyone who cares to play this game of multiple illumination will surely see the film in its most completely conscious light. Otherwise it simply depicts (as Brancusi put it): “One of those days I would not trade for anything under heaven.” (SB)
Star Garden
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For over seventy-five years, the Venice Biennale has been regarded as the most important international art exhibition. Countries all over the world send their best artists to the Biennale in the hope that they will receive international acclaim and recognition. In 1971, the two artists chosen to represent Canada were Gershon Iskowitz, a painter, and Walter Redinger, a sculptor. This is a lyrical and philosophical film showing their response to the aging city of Venice and to having their works exhibited at the Biennale.
Standing Apart
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“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
Standard Time
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Love, sex and death in Paris. The films were built frame-by-frame in-camera, each being a 100 foot roll. No cuts were made. Number 1-Esmeralda: A rampage through cathédrale Notre-Dame, with thanks to Victor H. Always nice when Esmeralda asks Quasimodo “Pourquoi m’avez-vous sauvé?” isn’t it… Number 2-Jezebel: Not a rampage but a secret run through rue st-Denis and Montmartre, le Moulin Rouge, Place Pigalle. The sex trade in Paris as seen from a dark and bright night. Number 3-Shiva: Not a secret run but a flight through the sprawling, centuries-old cemetery, Père Lachaise. A landscape of old glass, old iron and old stone set deep in the 20th arrondissement. Images of the ritual of the Holy.
Staccato
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“A barrage of intense optical printing …the cinematic equivalent of a psychotropic drug trip.” – John Griffen, The Montreal Gazette “… makes a bold effort to actually blow your mind ….” – San Francisco Bay Guardian
Square Root of Negative Three, The
