Cinema
Wavelength
Michael Snow · 1967
Synopsis
A loft on Canal Street, in New York, four double windows onto the street, a few pieces of furniture. The camera stays fixed and the frame tightens, very slowly, for forty-five minutes. Two men bring in a bookcase on a woman's orders; two women listen to Strawberry Fields Forever on the radio; a man staggers in and collapses; a woman telephones a certain Richard. The zoom continues its course, the colours and filters change, and a continuous sound rises higher and higher.
Context
The film was shot in December 1966 in the filmmaker's loft, on sixteen-millimetre colour film. The painter and filmmaker Hollis Frampton plays the man who collapses, and the critic Amy Taubin the woman on the telephone. The sound is a sine wave rising from fifty to twelve thousand cycles per second. In 2003, Snow made a fifteen-minute version of it, intended for those who do not have the time.
Who it is for
Forty-five minutes, almost without speech; an experimental film that asks the viewer to accept slowness and continuous sound.
Prizes and reception
Grand Prize at the fourth International Experimental Film Festival of Knokke-le-Zoute, in Belgium.
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