Presents

Presents

1981 · 99 min · ★ 6.6 · Fantasy

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 set, in this first of three material 'investigations' of camera movement. In the second, the camera literally invades the set; a plexiglass sheet in front of the dolly crushes everything in its sight as it zooms through space. Finally, this monster of formalism pushes through the wall of the set and the film cuts to a series of rapidly edited shots as the camera zigzags over lines of force and moving fields of vision in an approximation of the eye in nature. Snow pushes us into acceptance of present moments of vision, but the single drum beat that coincides with each edit in this elegaic section announces each moment of life's irreversible disappearance.

Directed by Michael Snow

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Presents

Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World

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Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World

Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World · 1985

Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World

MovieDocumentary

Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World belongs to a 35-hour film cycle, The Book of All the Dead, which comprises the bulk of Toronto-based Bruce Elder’s filmmaking from 1975 to 1994. In ancient Egyptian culture, the Book of the Dead consisted of religious texts intended to help preserve the spirit of the departed in the afterlife — but in Elder’s reading, that comforting idea of continuity takes on a rather darker cast. Lamentations is comprised of a complex audio and visual patchwork: a philosophical meditation superimposed as text throughout the film; vignettes featuring a comical but disturbing Franz Liszt, a debate between Isaac Newton and George Berkeley, an angry, deranged man in an alley, and an arrogant psychiatrist; and a final search for salvation in the forests of British Columbia, the American Southwest, and Mexico’s Yucatan.

To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror

To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror · 1991

To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror

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 camera arcs past and over them (the replete set of positions recalls La région centrale’s movements). Brown abraded the film stock, creating a continuous dynamic surface-effect tension with the comparatively static views and cueing the soundtrack, the crackle of fire. The physics and chemistry of combustion were the scientific focus of Lavoisier, the 18th-century savant.

Standard Time

Standard Time · 1967

Experimental short in which a camera pans quickly in a small apartment space; Disembodied voices speak of audience engagement.

‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen

‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen · 1974

‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen

MovieComedyMystery

Various unrelated vignettes, often juxtaposing sound and image.

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance · 1979

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance

MovieDocumentary

Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of events dealing with the historical development of the number pi, Benning's travels, and homages to Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, George Landow (Owen Land), and Yvonne Rainer.

La Région Centrale

La Région Centrale · 1971

La Région Centrale

MovieDocumentary

A 1971 experimental Canadian film directed by Michael Snow. Shot in the Canadian mountains over a period of 24 hours using a robotic arm.

Back and Forth

Back and Forth · 1969

A camera moves back and forth at an increasing pace. Back and forth, back and forth...

Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia)

Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia) · 1971

Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia)

Michael Snow narrates a series of Hollis Frampton's photographs (speaking as Frampton, in the first person)—as each picture catches fire on a hot plate.

For Life, Against the War

For Life, Against the War · 1967

For Life, Against the War

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 Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art

I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art · 1987

I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art

MovieDocumentary

This is an interesting little documentary about the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, which was apparently one of the global hotbeds of experimental/avant garde art- particularly video art- back in the 70's & 80's. MacGillvary interviews a number of the artists that were formative to the program. Many of whom would go on to become teachers at the school.

Wavelength

Wavelength · 1967

In a Lower Manhattan industrial loft, a camera very slowly zooms into a photograph on a wall while various people occasionally enter and exit.

Manual of Arms

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.

Cinématon

Cinématon · 1978

MovieDocumentary

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Snowblind

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

Sshtoorrty

Sshtoorrty · 2005

A loop of two parts of a film, superimposed on top of one another, that concern a man who has arrived at the house of his lover and her husband to hang a painting on their wall.

Dream Life

Dream Life · 1972

Two twenty-something women dream of the ideal man and slowly realize that reality is very different from their fantasies.

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