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It was the last big film following from the "Cone" series. It's made of four forty-minute reels, and the six hours results from showing all the possible permutations of those reels; each reel can go through the projector backwards and forwards, inside out and right way around. Each reel has four ways of being put through the projector.
MacDonald:
Was
Four Projected Movements
made as a study for
Long Film for Four Projectors,
but released later?
McCall:
No.
Four Projected Movements
was in a way a précis of
Long Film for Four Projectors
. You make something on a large scale, then you want to make something much finer, simpler.
Four Projected Movements
clarified that idea of permutation. It was one fifteen-minute reel of film, put through the projector four ways. The other change was that instead of existing in an open empty space, it was presented against a wall, so that the plane of light was always experienced in relation to the wall or the floor: it "pushed" people against the wall, away from the wall, down onto the floor . . .
MacDonald:
I've only shown it once, but it has the same kind of impact that
Line Describing a Cone
has.
McCall:
It's a simple film, and, unlike
Long Film for Four Projectors,
easy to send through the mail with instructions.
MacDonald:
A number of people have done work related to your projected-light films. Some of Taka Iimura's work in the early seventies is related in a general sense, as is Tony Conrad's
The Flicker
[1966], though in other ways,
The Flicker
is nearly the opposite of
Line Describing a Cone
.
McCall:
I didn't see a lot of the films that, I suppose I could say, influenced me. I didn't see Michael Snow's
Wavelength
until 1976, but I'd read about it, and other films, in David Curtis's
Experimental Cinema
[London: Studio Vista Ltd., 1971]. I was intrigued by his description of
Wavelength
. The idea of creating a rule that would generate a filma continuous zoom in this casewas fascinating. It was a surprise to me when I finally saw
Wavelength,
because it didn't have anything like the precision and cleanliness I had assumed from Curtis's description. It stopped and started; it jumped; light came in and out; and people arrived and left. It's quite funny to think that one can be influenced by a description of something which doesn't accurately represent the thing itself.
I didn't see
The Flicker
although again I had read about ituntil 1975 at Anthology [Anthology Film Archives]. People talked as though
Line Describing a Cone
were a three-dimensional version of
The Flicker
. They are both about light, but, as you say, they're also very different. Tony Conrad rented
Line Describing a Cone
sight unseen from a description he had read. He was teaching at Antioch. Then he called me and invited me out there. We had a great time together.