Films

Wavelength

Director:
Michael Snow

Year:
1967

Runtime:
45 mins.

Starring:
Hollis Frampton
Lyne Grossman
Naoto Nakazawa
Roswell Rudd
Amy Taubin
Joyce Wieland
Amy Yadrin

Synopsis:
The film is a continuous zoom which takes 45 minutes to go from its widest field to its smallest and final field. It was shot with a fixed camera from one end of an 80 foot loft, shooting the other end, a row of windows and the street …. The room (and the zoom) are interrupted by four human events including a death. The sound on these occasions is sync sound, music and speech, occurring simultaneously with an electronic sound, a sine-wave …. It is a total glissando while the film is a crescendo and a dispersed spectrum which attempts to utilize the gifts of both prophecy and memory which only film and music have to offer. (from the Film-makers’ Cooperative)

DVD:
None

Official Website:
None

Awards:
Grand Prize: 4th International Experimental Film Festival (Belgium) (1967)

Online Reviews:
All Movie (Tom Vick)
Raging Bull (Mike Lorefice)
Film Fanatic (unknown)
Hammer to Nail (Brandon Harris)

Print Reviews/Analysis:
The Essential Cinema: Essays on the films in the collection of Anthology Film Archives, Volume One, ed. P. Adams Sitney. (New York University Press and Anthology Film Archives, 1975) (Chapter 11: Michael Snow’s Cinema (Wavelength, <——>, The Central Region), P. Adams Sitney, pp. 219-229.)

Video:
None

Underground Film Feedback (2 Notes)

  1. [...] learn about the “underground,” and while I remember hearing about Michael Snow’s Wavelength, for example, in a classroom, we weren’t really specifically taught things like [...]

    Posted by Skip Battaglia: Parataxis | Bad Lit | April 13, 2010, 10:02 am
  2. [...] Smith: Scotch Tape, 1962 Flaming Creatures, 1963 No President, 1969Michael Snow: Wavelength, 1967 <—->, 1969 La Region Centrale, 1970-71 (The Central Region)Frank Stauffacher: [...]

    Posted by Anthology Film Archives’ Essential Cinema Repertory Collection | Bad Lit | January 12, 2012, 5:59 pm

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