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Michael Snow
Very few filmmakers have had as powerful an impact on North American independent cinema as Michael Snow. Indeed, five of this volume's interviewees (Ono, McCall, Noren, Benning, and Mulvey) talk specifically about him, as do several of the interviewees in Volume 1. The impact of Snow's workand of the breakthrough
Wavelength
(1967), in particularis a function of the fact that Snow came to filmmaking, not with extensive experience as a moviegoerconventional cinema never seems to have been of particular interest to himbut as an accomplished musician, painter, sculptor, and photographer, for whom the movie camera and projection space were new artistic tools to explore. While it was not his first extended filmthat was
New York Eye and Ear Control
(1964)
Wavelength
established him as a major contributor to the development of critical cinema.
In
Wavelength,
Snow demonstrated a new approach to cinematic space and time, and, at least by implication, declared his independence from the reliance on narrative in both conventional and independent cinema, as well as from the exploration of the personal that was characteristic of so many of the films of the sixties.
Wavelength
defined a new kind of ''plot," one closer to the geometric sense of the term than to its conventional meaning in film. Snow divided the focal length of his zoom lens into approximately equal increments and zoomed, at intervals, from the most wide-angle view of a New York City loft space to a close-up of a photograph on the far wall. The relentlessness of the viewer's journey across the loft is wittily confirmed by periodic nods in the direction of conventional narrative: near the beginning of the film, a woman (Amy