The Power Plant

Michael Snow Film Series

Wed Jan 27 – Mon Feb 22 2010

7:00 PM – 7:00 PM

28 January 2010 / La Région centrale by Michael Snow

A film as fresh and radical as it was when first made, La Région centrale (1971, 180 min.) is both monument and masterpiece. Upon the film’s release, Artforum declared it “an unimaginable film, literally like nothing you have ever seen before” and the film quickly attained cult status. Aided by a Montréal technician, Snow created a camera that could be programmed to record and move autonomously through the landscape – the barren, big-skied and rocky terrain, 100 miles north of Sept-Isles, Québec. In this deserted and eerie expanse, the robotic arm allows the camera to zoom and zigzag in plein-air play. This screening is co-presented with TIFF Cinematheque.

3 February 2010 / Snows Gone By

"Snows Gone By" features three films from three decades by Michael Snow. Triage (2004, 30 min.) is a dual-projection collaboration with Carl Brown where each artist was unaware of what the other was doing with their half-hour of film. Snow’s contribution is a dazzling visual encyclopedia of animals, vegetables, minerals, products, images, and colours: “24 frames of everything.” See You LaterAu Revoir (1990, 18 min.) features Snow performing a series of simple gestures in a room. Recorded with a “Super Slo-Mo” video camera, the banal transforms into the sublime. Presents (1981, 90 min) is a playful exploration of three different camera movements. A film set moves while the camera stays still; the camera presses forward into the set, crushing everything in sight; finally, the camera breaches the walls before engaging in a barrage of rapid zigzagging.

18 February 2010 / Wavelength by Michael Snow with Elizabeth Legge

Launching her new book in Afterall’s One Work series about the film, Elizabeth Legge introduces a screening of Snow’s legendary Wavelength (1967, 45 min.), considered one of the most important experimental films of all time. Legge is the Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. She has written extensively on Dada and Surrealism, and on contemporary British and Canadian art. Wavelength will be followed by a Q&A with Michael Snow, and preceded by Snow’s short film Standard Time (1967, 8 min.). Copies of the book Wavelength will be on sale and Legge will be available to sign them at the event. Co-presented with The Drake Hotel.

23 February 2010 / New Snow

"New Snow" presents the Toronto premiere of Reverberlin (2006, 67 min.). Snow’s digital video creates a visual counterpoint to the audio recording of a 2002 Berlin concert by CCMC, the legendary noise band featuring Snow (piano, radio), Paul Dutton (soundsinging, harmonica) and John Oswald (alto saxophone, saxo-voice). Reverberlin will be preceded by Puccini Conservato (2009, 10 min), which stages a confrontation between the video camera and a stereo system playing Puccini’s La Bohème. The artist will be present for a post-screening Q&A.