Michael Snow videos and links

My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor ... sometimes they all work together. (Michael Snow)

[N]o other artist has done so much to destabilise our approximation of the visible than Michael Snow. By threatening the very tools we rely on to process what we perceive, the artist creates unnerving yet frequently poetic works. His avant-garde film-making is less about a way of understanding the camera as a device for recording than as an instrument whose structural, material properties can form the main focus of the work. (Tim Clarke)

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you another video gem from the Tate Channel in which the highly distinguished Canadian artist Michael Snow, one of the most influential experimental filmmakers (including of such masterworks as Wavelength [1967)], La Région Centrale [1971], and *Corpus Callosum [2002]) discusses his work. Snow, who will reach the grand old age of 80 this December, gave this illustrated talk at the Tate Modern in London on October 26, 2001, on the occasion of a major retrospective of his work that year at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. The talk, a very detailed and insightful revisiting of the entirety of his work to that point, lasts just under two hours.

Here also, as is FSFF's wont, are links to further wonderful, freely accessible, online, scholarly Michael Snow resources. Below the list are two other embedded videos: the first, a ten minute overview of Snow's work; the second, a video version of Snow's 1967 experimental film Wavelength (please read the comments on this post for a discussion of the ethics of reproducing this very poor copy of the film):

• The Michael Snow Dossier, Offscreen Journal, November 2002 (Michael Snow: A Brief Introduction by Peter Rist;La Région Centrale by Peter Rist; Wavelength Revisitedby Donato Totaro; Master Lessons With Michael Snowby Louis Goyette;Weathering the Creative Storm: An Interview With Michael Snow by Donato Totaro and André Habib;Transcending the Fragmentation of Experience: The acousmêtre on the air in the films of Michael Snow by Randolph Jordan)

• Cleo Cacoulides, '"Too Busy Making Work":Michael Snow', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 44, 2004

• Bruce Elder, 'On Michael Snow', Ciné-Tracts 9; Vol.3, No. 1, (Winter, 1980) scroll down in pdf

• Alex Farquharson, 'Michael Snow', Frieze, Issue 64, January-February 2002

• Adèle Flannery and Maia Lussier-Seguin, 'Snow at Concordia: An Interview with Michael Snow', Offcreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 3, March 2009

• Maximilian Le Cain, 'Snow Drift: The 2007 Lucca Film Festival 28 September – 6 October 2007', Senses of Cinema, Issue 46, 2008

• Brett Kashmere, 'Underground Film, Into the Light: Two Sides of the Projected Image in American Art, 1945-1975', Synoptique 8, March 2005

• Tila Landon Kellman, Figuring redemption: resighting my self in the art of Michael Snow - (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002 -Google Books)

• Jane Simon, 'Reading in the Dark', M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, January 12, 2004

• Michael Snow, with Louise Dompierre, The collected writings of Michael Snow (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University press, 1994 - Google Books)


• Michael Snow and Bruce Elder, 'In conversation', Ciné-Tracts 5, No. 1, (17), Summer/Fall, 1982) scroll down in pdf


• Michael Snow and Jesse Stewart, 'In Conversation: Toronto, November 2005', Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 3, No 1 (2007)