The best Michael Snow’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Michael Snow’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Michael Snow.
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
7.4/10
An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
6.9/10
Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.
Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia)
6.7/10
In which the off-screen voice of Michael Snow narrates a series of Frampton's photographs (speaking as Frampton, in the first person)—as each picture catches fire on a hot plate.
Birth of a Nation
7.1/10
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen
6.6/10
Described (rather cheekily) by director Michael Snow as a musical comedy, this deft probing of sound/image relationships is one of his wittiest, most entertaining and philosophically stimulating films. In his words, the film “derives its form and the nature of its possible effects from its being built from the inside, as it were, with the actual units of such a film, i.e. the frame and the recorded syllable. Thus its ‘dramatic’ element derives not only from a representation of what may involve us generally in life but from considerations of the nature of recorded speech in relation to moving light-images of people.’”
Manual of Arms
5.2/10
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.
Bill's Hat
"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.
I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
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.
Short Shave
"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."
Portrait of Snow
A serendipitous encounter with a younger artist gives legendary Canadian art icon Michael Snow the opportunity to reflect on his life and career.
Snow In Vienna
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.
A Lecture
Performance piece by Frampton, recorded in 1968 with the voice of artist Michael Snow
