Toronto is regarded as the third largest jazz centre in North America. This film features a cross-section of jazz bands of that city: the Lenny Breau Trio, the Don Thompson Quintet and the Alf Jones Quartet. Their styles show creative self-expression, hard work, and improvisation.
A rare film shot in Super 8 by Michael Snow in 1984 that is almost unseen: an exercise in improvisation in which Snow plays the piano with one hand while filming with the other.
Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of events dealing with the historical development of the number pi, Benning's travels, and homages to Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, George Landow (Owen...
This performance piece by filmmaker Hollis Frampton, recorded in 1968 in New York City, features the voice of artist Michael Snow. Frampton would place a tape deck at the front of a room, press play, and walk to the back to run a 16mm projector. Presented here is the audio portion of the piece,...
"Vanity. Had a beard. Appearance (looks). Looking. Disappearance act. Hand-made fades and zooms but camera made shave. Camerazor. Handsome. Tired. Walking Woman. My worst film."
To Lavoisier Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991) is a collaboration with filmmaker Carl Brown, who specializes in homebrewed chemical film development. In a series of tableaux, people perform everyday tasks — sleeping, dining, reading, card-playing — as the camera arcs past and over them...
Puccini Conservato uses a CD, a sound recording of some Puccini music (from La Bohème). The source of the sound (the loudspeakers) in a continuous hand-held panning (guided by the music), is intercut with shots of flowers or wood-fire, exemplifying the lyricism in Puccini’s music. By being a...
Michael Snow's 1970 film A Casing Shelved combines a projection of a 35mm slide showing a bookcase in Snow's studio with a tape-recorded narration by the artist that discusses various objects within the image. Not only addressing viewers directly, Snow's narration attempts to direct our eyes toward...
Although Seated Figures is characteristically confined by a specific placement of the camera — in this case, fixed to the rear of a pickup truck and aimed at the ground — the result is one of Snow's most visually compelling films. As Snow drives the truck over all kinds of terrain — he has...
Two 16mm films are projected in a loop on a thin painted aluminum screen hanging in the middle of a room. We can hear the projectors at each end of the room, which project images on the central screen. We can see the same scene on each side of the screen: a woman, seen from the front and front back...
In this "fourteen-part drill for the camera," Frampton created a portrait gallery of his art-world friends engaging in a variety of ordinary activities.
