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was really, really inspiring. After thatit might have been through Bobwe discovered the Cinematheque screenings. When we were in Toronto, we didn't know there was a genre called ''experimental film." We had seen Norman McLaren's films and not much else. When we were making our own films, we didn't feel like they were part of a big development. Anyway, we started to go to the Cinematheque and to meet people. Ken Jacobs was one of the first. And he was fabulous in those days, really an amazing man.
I was still saying to myself, "You should stop this and just do that, or you're just gonna be a dilettante all your life." I had thought that going to New York would clarify that. In fact, it didn't. I just kept on multiplying my interests.
MacDonald:
You and Joyce were beginning to make films at the same time, and in one instance [
Dripping Water,
1969] you did collaborate. Was there a reason why you didn't collaborate more often?
Snow:
Our work was always independent. We discussed, and looked at work, and helped each other, but we never thought about doing things together. She had her own direction. She was affected by the Kuchar experience in a way that I wasn't. Their work was close to her sensibility in a lot of ways. I was very affected by
A Town Called Tempest
and their other films because I liked the freedom of it and the fact that George and Mike just went ahead and
did
it. It's wonderful, but it wasn't my kind of thing. I think it really opened up things for Joyce. She didn't imitate them, but she had a kinship with their work. I don't know whether you've seen any of her 8mm films, but they're really terrific. I don't know what's happened to them. She was going to get some blown up, but I don't know whether she ever did. When I was starting the first attempt at
Eye and Ear Control,
she was already shooting in 8mm.
MacDonald:
Where does
Short Shave
[1965] fit into all this?
Snow:
I did it before
Wavelength,
and after
Eye and Ear Control
.
MacDonald:
It's a nice film.
Snow:
You like it? I think you know I said in the Co-op Catalogue that it was my worst film. I saw it recently and I think it's good, too. I had worked with the Walking Woman concept from 1961 to 1967. I still had ideas for it, but I decided that it had to stop. And making that film, shaving that beard off, was part of trying to make the change. Actually, I had a big commission, the first I ever hadfor Expo '67 in Montreal. And I decided that would be a nice way to end
The Walking Woman Works
. The Expo '67 piece grew out of the dispersed things that I'd done before, but this was more monumental, in stainless steel. There were eleven parts scattered all over the Expo area. They fit together, perhaps, in your memory; they couldn't all be seen together. So anyway, that was the last of
The Walking Woman Works,
except for her bow-out in
Wave
-