Michael Snow, Interviewed
Interview conducted by Tj Alston on April 27th, 2015. The interview was conducted at Michael Snow's home residence and is reproduced here in full with minor changes made for flow and ease of readability. All changes have been approved by Michael Snow.
Take Two: For this project we are looking at a specific time period, between 1965 and 1975 for Toronto filmmakers but also what Toronto born filmmakers were doing at the time. When you first moved to New York in 1963/1964...
Michael Snow: I was trying to figure it out, but I think we left in late 62, and we were there in 63.
When you did leave for New York what was the state of independent filmmaking in Toronto?
In a sense there really wasn't any. I made my first film in 1954, that was not because there was any kind of film scene but because I was working at Graphic Films. It's a long story, and I've told this story before and this will be a different version of it [laughs]. I had an exhibition of drawings with Graham Coughtry at Hart House at the University of Toronto, and I was contacted by someone who had seen it, who said that he found the drawings very interesting and he wanted to meet me. It turned out he had a film company, and he thought there was something about my drawings that indicated that I was interested in the movies, which definitely wasn't so. I didn't have a particular interest, and I very rarely went to the movies. It was a wonderful thing because he offered me a job learning how to do animation on the job. It was fantastic even though I didn't know anything. I worked for this company, and Joyce Wieland was there too [Editor's note: Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland would eventually marry after first meeting at Graphic Films]. This man was George Dunning, who later became famous for directing the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. After the Toronto company collapsed he went to England.
In any rate that was my introduction to film. You probably don't know anything about this. [Snow presents DVD of a film directed by Warren Collins]. Warren Collins was the animation cameraman there.
We are actually featuring one of his films in the programme, The Musical Chairs.
Ah yes.
The possibility of making something independent of the work we were doing came up and didn't seem to be such a far out thing because Warren had a Bolex. We made a couple of films together, and this is when Bob Cowan came into the picture. He is interesting in a way, but I can't pin down the exact time. In the 50s he was living here, and he was also living in New Work. When Joyce and I went to New York in 1962, we stayed at his place which was in Brooklyn. This lead to our introduction to the Kuchar brothers. Bob Cowan told us he was in these films made by these twin brothers who were, at the time, 18. That was one of the first introductions to experimental films in New York. I didn't think of it as an entity at all before that. I was a painter and sculptor, and also working as a musician. I just didn't think of myself as filmmaker, I just made a film.
Going to New York we both just discovered the so called underground cinema which we didn't know anything about. We started attending screenings and getting involved in every way, meeting people, etc. I wasn't conscious of any kind of scene here. All I knew was Warren [Collins]. Somewhere in there Joyce and I bought a camera, so there was an intention to make films, I just don't remember any other film activity at the time.
By 1965 I had already been in New York for a couple of years, and in 1964 I made New York Eye and Ear Control, which was commissioned by Ten Centuries Concerts, a group of Toronto classical composers who organized concerts mixing new and old musics. On the other hand, in the 1960s, I was here [in Toronto] frequently. I had several shows in the Isaacs gallery. Solo shows and also groups shows. In 1966 I was commissioned to do a sculpture for Expo 67. I was here working on that, and I played with the Artist Jazz Band whenever I was here. Both Joyce and I were here frequently during the 1960s even though we ostensibly live in New York.
While you were here in the 1960s, to what degree were you aware of the independent films being made locally in Toronto?
What I do remember is that the CFMDC started then, and it was part of the energy that was happening in New York, and also in London England. They all had as a model the New York Filmmaker's Co-Op, and also as a kind of activist Jonas Mekas was tremendously important. The screenings that Joyce and I went to in New York were put on by Mekas in various theatres. It's not to say that MOMA or the Whitney weren't showing these films, but basically the so called underground was Jonas, and he totally affected my life by suggesting that I send my film Wavelength, which had not been shown publicly when he saw it, to a film festival in Belgium where it won the grand prize, and that changed things.
When you were living in New York was there a moment when some of the independent student/artist films which were being made in Toronto began to be screened in these underground screenings that Jonas Mekas was putting on, or were they only films they you would see in Toronto when you returned?
Yes, they didn't really get around that much. The only Canadian I remember showing in the 60s in New York is David Rimmer, but no one from Toronto that I can think of. For me, I didn't notice any connection between what filmmakers in Toronto were showing in New York. The only Canadian I can remember is David Rimmer.
One event that has cropped up a lot in our research is the Cinethon, an event run by the people who began the CFMDC. Were you at all involved in that?
I think my films, or a film, or some films were shown in Cinethon.
Cinethon itself was put on in 1967, and I think it was only done once.
I remember the name, and I think I was involved at least once, but I don't remember what it was. It might have been Wavelength.
That would have been the right time period.
I think Wavelength was first shown in Canada at the AGO.
Do you remember when it was shown at the AGO? Would that have been 1967/68?
Peggy [Ed Note: Peggy Gale, Michael Snow's current spouse] could answer that, because she was working at the AGO when it happened.
In an interview you did with Take One in 1971 with Joe Medjuck, there is sense that you felt no one in Toronto would have been interested in your films or Joyce Wieland's films when you left the city in 1962/63. When you came back in 1971, how had the film cultured changed?
The interest in experimental film had increased to a certain extent. The CFMDC was fairly active. I used to know Jim Murphy fairly well, and he was involved with the CFMDC at the time. There was an increase in activity, but it couldn't compete with what was going on in New York at the time.
When you came back to Toronto were there any film artists who stood out?
Yes, certainly. Jack Chambers and Greg Curnow. The London Ontario scene was quite strong, and Jack made a couple of interesting films in 69/70.
Would that have been The Circle?
Yes. And of course he was a marvelous painter. [His] films made at that time were noticeably very good.
Part of what we have been looking at is the other side of it, not just artist made films but also student made films which included people like Michael Hirsch and David Cronenberg. It's interesting to see the different dynamics play out between what the artists were doing and what the students were doing, which seemed to be more narrative forms.
There really was a conscious division. I met Cronenberg early, I know him quite well. He used to live three doors down from here, on this street. Right from the beginning he was going somewhere else compared to the so called experimental scene.
He consciously said to himself "I am going to be a narrative filmmaker” and consequently went down that path?
His first film that he made at UofT [Transfer, 1966], it wasn't involved in any of the qualities or issues that I had become interested in. When I was working at Graphic Films, and really being introduced to film, George Dunning had been at the National Film Board, and he made a couple of films when he was there, one called The Romance of Transportation which was quite nice, and of course he knew Norman McLaren. The people that he hired to educate, like myself and Joyce, he would show us films such as McLaren's films. I wasn't conscious of them belonging to a kind of category or area, they were just particular films that were very interesting. I certainly was aware of independent attitudes in film because of George Dunning.
On one side you had the more commercially based filmmakers and on the other side the more experimental filmmakers, and just now you mentioned you didn't see a difference between experimental and commercially minded independent films in the 1950s. However, in the early 1970s was there any sense of division between these two groups of filmmakers who wanted to make commercial films and those who were more interested in experimental films?
That brings to mind Don Owen, who was kind of a special category. He made documentary films, Toronto Jazz is one that he made which I am actually in. He did something that seemed mildly revolutionary at the time, which was to concentrate on here and not look elsewhere. The most extreme example is a wonderful film he made called Cowboy and Indian, which is a film about the two painters who were two of originators of the Artists Jazz Band, Bob Markel and Gord Rayner. Making a film about them was a very exciting thing because it was a recognition of them as interesting individuals, which they were, and also what they did as music and what they did as art was also interesting and it wasn't provincial.
What do you mean by provincial?
Often in the past when there is a Capital where things are happening, it was once Paris and then it became New York, and something that would happen away from the capital would be called provincial. At the time it's suggesting that certain values can be superior to other values. This was something that Greg Curnoe was fighting against. It was felt that good work could only be done in New York. If you were living in a small town like London, Ontario, you hardly could do good work, which is silly. But that is what provincial seems to be.
It's interesting that you mention that because in previous interviews that you have done you stated that, and I’m paraphrasing, you and Joyce Wieland needed to go to New York in order to find out what was possible for yourselves as artists. It sounds like you subscribed to that idea that only good work can come out of New York, but then your opinion on that has since changed.
Yes. Starting in the 50s I was watching very closely what was going on in New York and being very affected by it. It was a fantastic period creatively, starting with the so called abstract expressionists. We used to go to New York and see shows and listen to music a couple of times a year. In a way I was more involved with the New York scene as opposed to the Toronto as far as what I found interesting and what affected my own work. It was not so much for Joyce. I thought that since I was involved by watching what was going on there and was being affected by it, I might as well be there and see what that is like.
Another thing that is kind of odd is that I decided to stop playing music. Before that I had been playing quite a bit. For about a year and a half, and I made my living from music. I was playing every night. I felt that I was doing too many thing and that going to New York would be a good time to stop making music. That didn't work out, and I kept going on.
You felt that when you moved to New York you would have to make a decision between painting, sculpting, filmmaking, and music?
No, filmmaking was one of the mediums that I was interested in. One of the points of The Walking Women works, which started in 1961, was to use the same form in every medium possible. That's much too simplified, but I really was interested in using different mediums. New York Eye and Ear Control, which was done in 1964, is a Walking Woman work. It's a film that uses that outline. I didn't think of myself as filmmaker but as an artist that uses different mediums.
Going back to the time when you came back to Toronto, there is one institution which is mentioned quite a bit and it seemed to be a pillar in the Toronto scene, that institution being Rochdale College. Can you elaborate on any interactions you had with the college?
The CFMDC had offices in Rochdale.
Were you ever involved in any classes there? Were you ever asked to teach?
During the 1960s I had long hair and I took every drug, so I was very fashionable I guess. [laughs]
[laughing] I guess then you likely would have been to Rochdale every now and then.
Its funny I don't remember more about Rochdale. I was certainly in that building and probably did go to the CFMDC. I think one of the film magazines had offices there.
Do you remember which one?
No, I can't remember now. Maybe that's wrong.
Speaking of the CFMDC, how did your relationship with the CFMDC begin?
When I had some films and I wanted to have them distributed I went to them. The CFMDC's model was the [same as the] New York Filmmaker's Co-Op, but I don't know when I would have gotten involved with them. I was on the board for awhile, but I'm not sure which years that would have been. It would have been after 1967, because I didn't have much to distribute much before that, so it probably coincided with Wavelength.
After you came back from New York you mentioned a few times...
MS: I should clarify that. It wasn't just coming back, there was an overlapping period during the 1970s...for example I was making my film Rameau's Nephew, which is a four and half hour long film that took three years to make, and I was making it at the time when we were moving back to Toronto, but we still kept our loft in New York. So 72/73 we were in New York quite frequently. We had our own place. So there is overlap there that isn't quite decisive.
There is a transition period.
Yes.
You have mentioned that the CFMDC was influenced by the New York Film Co-Op and their model and how they did things. When you were first made aware of the CFMDC or the Toronto Film Co-Op, what were your initial perceptions on they were doing and how they were effecting filmmaking in Toronto?
It sounds like they were just imitators, but they weren't. There was sort of a movement that we were all involved in, that had it's strongest aspects in New York but, for example, affected London, England as well. There were filmmakers there. It was a kind of a movement that Toronto was involved in, like San Francisco, for example, who had a longer history with of involvement with experimental film. There was a big movement that Toronto was apart of.
And at that time New York would have been the epicentre of that movement?
New York was certainly the centre. However, there are exceptional people like Bruce Elder who has been making films and has been active as a teacher, and he has had a very big influence and his books are fantastic too. I think he was emerging on to the scene during the late 60s as well, and he was certainly one of the most important people who came up then.
In our research we have found that you have done a few collaborations with other filmmakers, most notably Joyce Wieland and Keith Lock. Well, in the case of Keith Lock he worked for you as a cameraman on one of your films...
Yes. We made my book, Cover to Cover, he was one of my photographers and we also shot Presents, which was made in 1982. I have known Keith since probably 1970, something like that.
Were there any other Toronto based or born filmmakers you were collaborating with at the time, or that you had worked with?
Well, it's a little bit later but Carl Brown and I made a film called Triage (2004) . He is a very fine filmmaker. He lives in the suburbs near Toronto, and isn't very active, but his own films are very interesting. Speaking of collaborations I did a film called To Lavoisier (1991), which I worked with him on the processing of the film. He's one of the first people to get involved with the chemistry of film development, changing the mixes of chemicals and temperature duration.
I'm going to move on now to talk a bit about Standard Time. Regina Cornwall, in her book “The Film and Photographs of Michael Snow”, states that “it is clear that after completing Wavelength Snow had immediately pursued his camera investigations in another area”. What was it about experimenting with the formal aspects of camera movements such as zooms, pans, and tilts that interested you over other aspects of film construction such as editing? What drew your curiosity?
The effects produced by moving the camera in different ways are something that were very particular to cinema. The zoom is not something the eyes can do, it's an optical thing, it's what the camera can do and what a lens can do. You are seeing something that is technological and aesthetic. The movement of the camera produces effects that are not optical either in the sense that they imitate the eye. These are things that are particular to cinema, and I wanted to make films that used the essentials of what cinema can do. Editing is certainly one thing, you can cut a film up into any number of pieces but I don't think it's visually or optically related like camera movement.
It started with New York Eye and Ear Control, I started looking at the whole situation of simultaneous sound and picture, and sync sound is terrific in that you can see a representation of the head and the mouth moves and you hear the person talk. I unraveled that with Rameau's Nephew. That's another thing I got involved with was investigating image/sound relations because they are something that had never existed before.
After Wavelength I became interested in panning, and Standard Time was a kind of a sketch where I was teaching myself about the effects of panning, from which I made a more formal use of panning with <---->, which also lead to La Region Centrale, which is a more involved and complicated use of panning.
With Standard Time you say that it was a kind of sketch, and how at the time you were experimenting with the panning and what it could do. What then lead you to also play with the sound and the volume that did and did not sync with the visuals?
I was doing a kind of panning of coming and going with the sound, done with the dial on a radio, turning the volume in and out and changing stations. I started to play the radio apart from Standard Time, and I didn't know that John Cage had been there first, and then I found out about that later, but I started to treat the radio like an instrument. In Standard Time what happens to the sound is not in sync with the picture. What happens to the sound is related to what happens in the image, but is appropriate to sound in the way that what happens to the image is appropriate for what happens to an image. Does that make sense? [laugh]
Yes! While I have been looking into Standard Time I have read a number of previous interviews where you have talked about it and I have seen it pop up in the programmes of retrospectives, and it seems almost exclusively in those programmes that they use your own description of the film, which was it was you home, wife, camera, radio and turtle movie. They don't seem to describe it beyond that, and it seems like they consider it to be a minor work. How do you feel it fits into your larger body of work?
Standard Time was much more improvised than Wavelength, which sounds kind of strange. Wavelength involved quite a lot of planning and there are lots of accidents in it and improvising because I wouldn't know what would happen when I changed the light this way, or used a gel. It was very experimental in some ways, but also very formal. I planned exactly what was going to happen as the camera goes. I divided up all of my rolls of film, knowing that this one was going to be used after 15 minutes, this roll was going to be used after 30 minutes, and so on, so it was very planned out. With Standard Time the impetus was I just wanted to find out more about panning, what changes the image: the speed and the proximity to the subject and all of those things. I found myself shooting it, completely improvised, in the home movie sense, which I hadn't done before really. That's why I call it my home movie. It was where Joyce and I lived at that time. It's more casual than any of the other films. The only other place I improvise that much is at the end of Presents. The last hour is all hand held panning.
In any case, that is what I meant by it was my home movie. It was my home, but also it was more like a "home movie" than any of the other films.
It's interesting that you would describe it like that, and now I find that I have an image of you in my mind of you waking up one day and saying "Well, ok, now I'm just going to twirl the camera around on a tripod and see what happens".
It was almost like that, yes. Whatever day that was, I had the film, and I don't know if I planned to have the film, but it was all done very casually. It is autobiographical because it was shot where I lived and my nude wife was in it. I thought of it a little bit later as being somewhat Brakhagian, and none of my other work was.
Going back to some previous interviews, and even in this interview you have used some of these terms to describe it, you have called Standard Time a sketch, an investigation, and an experimentation. Based on that and how you also describe the making of the film as being very casual, was there ever a time when you considered not releasing it, or trying to limit it's distribution in any way?
No, that's interesting you should say that. I always liked it, and it sort of took me by surprise that I did it. Whereas with the other ones they involved quite a bit of planning. It's strange that it should be surprising because I was very involved in improvisation in music, and I never made a conscious choice, but I never applied that improvisation interest to film.
Was there something specifically about the medium that drew you into the idea that film should be planned out, at least initially?
It seems that I thought there should be preparation.
It's interesting because at that time the French New Wave was beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I didn't think about what I did in relation to that kind of film at all.
Would you have been aware of what they were doing with improvisation?
I played jazz for awhile, and pretty much all the various styles of jazz are variations of a theme. You play a tune and then you play variations on the chord structure, and then you play the tune again. Well, I was getting more and more involved in free improvisation, which is themeless at the beginning. One part of my artistic existence was working on pure improvisation in music and in a certain sense it was being taken care of. It didn't occur to me to improvise with film.
Also, I would say that would be one of the things that Brakhage did, that he improvised with film, and I didn't want to do that. [laughs]
When you developed your film and got back the images did you go back and reshoot anything?
No. It's edited, and things are shifted a little bit from when they were shot chronologically, but there isn't that much editing involved. The sound was done separately. No, I didn't shoot anything additionally.
A lot of the editing would have been done in camera?
It's mostly the way it was shot, yes.
I have read in an interview, and not I'm not sure which one, that you think of Wavelength, Standard Time and La Region Central as a kind of trilogy of experimentation that you had done with camera movement, but the visual differences between Wavelength and Standard Time are so stark. In Wavelength you have a long, protracted zoom, and then in Standard Time you have essentially circular and vertical movement without the use of a zoom. I found it interesting that they could even be considered being linked in any way because visually they are strikingly different. Can we relate that to the improvisational nature of Standard Time, in that Wavelength is more structured and thus more rigid in what it tries to accomplish, whereas Standard Time was more playful?
I think ←→ is more rigid, but I think that is one of it's good qualities because it is very hard, and I think that's right because it’s percussion. This is interesting in a way, because another film I made at the time called One Second in Montreal, which is also thoroughly formal because it's only about duration, about how long an image is on the screen. It's also silent. It's very pure. You might be able to improvise something like that, but it was done mathematically. There are so many frames of this, 60 frames of that, than 50 frames of that. Right from the very beginning I was interested in composing with film, and improvisation also requires documentation. It's quite an interesting point you brought up. It does have a little bit to do with improvisation in music and not wanting to do that with film, but to do something else with film.
Michael Snow: I was trying to figure it out, but I think we left in late 62, and we were there in 63.
When you did leave for New York what was the state of independent filmmaking in Toronto?
In a sense there really wasn't any. I made my first film in 1954, that was not because there was any kind of film scene but because I was working at Graphic Films. It's a long story, and I've told this story before and this will be a different version of it [laughs]. I had an exhibition of drawings with Graham Coughtry at Hart House at the University of Toronto, and I was contacted by someone who had seen it, who said that he found the drawings very interesting and he wanted to meet me. It turned out he had a film company, and he thought there was something about my drawings that indicated that I was interested in the movies, which definitely wasn't so. I didn't have a particular interest, and I very rarely went to the movies. It was a wonderful thing because he offered me a job learning how to do animation on the job. It was fantastic even though I didn't know anything. I worked for this company, and Joyce Wieland was there too [Editor's note: Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland would eventually marry after first meeting at Graphic Films]. This man was George Dunning, who later became famous for directing the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. After the Toronto company collapsed he went to England.
In any rate that was my introduction to film. You probably don't know anything about this. [Snow presents DVD of a film directed by Warren Collins]. Warren Collins was the animation cameraman there.
We are actually featuring one of his films in the programme, The Musical Chairs.
Ah yes.
The possibility of making something independent of the work we were doing came up and didn't seem to be such a far out thing because Warren had a Bolex. We made a couple of films together, and this is when Bob Cowan came into the picture. He is interesting in a way, but I can't pin down the exact time. In the 50s he was living here, and he was also living in New Work. When Joyce and I went to New York in 1962, we stayed at his place which was in Brooklyn. This lead to our introduction to the Kuchar brothers. Bob Cowan told us he was in these films made by these twin brothers who were, at the time, 18. That was one of the first introductions to experimental films in New York. I didn't think of it as an entity at all before that. I was a painter and sculptor, and also working as a musician. I just didn't think of myself as filmmaker, I just made a film.
Going to New York we both just discovered the so called underground cinema which we didn't know anything about. We started attending screenings and getting involved in every way, meeting people, etc. I wasn't conscious of any kind of scene here. All I knew was Warren [Collins]. Somewhere in there Joyce and I bought a camera, so there was an intention to make films, I just don't remember any other film activity at the time.
By 1965 I had already been in New York for a couple of years, and in 1964 I made New York Eye and Ear Control, which was commissioned by Ten Centuries Concerts, a group of Toronto classical composers who organized concerts mixing new and old musics. On the other hand, in the 1960s, I was here [in Toronto] frequently. I had several shows in the Isaacs gallery. Solo shows and also groups shows. In 1966 I was commissioned to do a sculpture for Expo 67. I was here working on that, and I played with the Artist Jazz Band whenever I was here. Both Joyce and I were here frequently during the 1960s even though we ostensibly live in New York.
While you were here in the 1960s, to what degree were you aware of the independent films being made locally in Toronto?
What I do remember is that the CFMDC started then, and it was part of the energy that was happening in New York, and also in London England. They all had as a model the New York Filmmaker's Co-Op, and also as a kind of activist Jonas Mekas was tremendously important. The screenings that Joyce and I went to in New York were put on by Mekas in various theatres. It's not to say that MOMA or the Whitney weren't showing these films, but basically the so called underground was Jonas, and he totally affected my life by suggesting that I send my film Wavelength, which had not been shown publicly when he saw it, to a film festival in Belgium where it won the grand prize, and that changed things.
When you were living in New York was there a moment when some of the independent student/artist films which were being made in Toronto began to be screened in these underground screenings that Jonas Mekas was putting on, or were they only films they you would see in Toronto when you returned?
Yes, they didn't really get around that much. The only Canadian I remember showing in the 60s in New York is David Rimmer, but no one from Toronto that I can think of. For me, I didn't notice any connection between what filmmakers in Toronto were showing in New York. The only Canadian I can remember is David Rimmer.
One event that has cropped up a lot in our research is the Cinethon, an event run by the people who began the CFMDC. Were you at all involved in that?
I think my films, or a film, or some films were shown in Cinethon.
Cinethon itself was put on in 1967, and I think it was only done once.
I remember the name, and I think I was involved at least once, but I don't remember what it was. It might have been Wavelength.
That would have been the right time period.
I think Wavelength was first shown in Canada at the AGO.
Do you remember when it was shown at the AGO? Would that have been 1967/68?
Peggy [Ed Note: Peggy Gale, Michael Snow's current spouse] could answer that, because she was working at the AGO when it happened.
In an interview you did with Take One in 1971 with Joe Medjuck, there is sense that you felt no one in Toronto would have been interested in your films or Joyce Wieland's films when you left the city in 1962/63. When you came back in 1971, how had the film cultured changed?
The interest in experimental film had increased to a certain extent. The CFMDC was fairly active. I used to know Jim Murphy fairly well, and he was involved with the CFMDC at the time. There was an increase in activity, but it couldn't compete with what was going on in New York at the time.
When you came back to Toronto were there any film artists who stood out?
Yes, certainly. Jack Chambers and Greg Curnow. The London Ontario scene was quite strong, and Jack made a couple of interesting films in 69/70.
Would that have been The Circle?
Yes. And of course he was a marvelous painter. [His] films made at that time were noticeably very good.
Part of what we have been looking at is the other side of it, not just artist made films but also student made films which included people like Michael Hirsch and David Cronenberg. It's interesting to see the different dynamics play out between what the artists were doing and what the students were doing, which seemed to be more narrative forms.
There really was a conscious division. I met Cronenberg early, I know him quite well. He used to live three doors down from here, on this street. Right from the beginning he was going somewhere else compared to the so called experimental scene.
He consciously said to himself "I am going to be a narrative filmmaker” and consequently went down that path?
His first film that he made at UofT [Transfer, 1966], it wasn't involved in any of the qualities or issues that I had become interested in. When I was working at Graphic Films, and really being introduced to film, George Dunning had been at the National Film Board, and he made a couple of films when he was there, one called The Romance of Transportation which was quite nice, and of course he knew Norman McLaren. The people that he hired to educate, like myself and Joyce, he would show us films such as McLaren's films. I wasn't conscious of them belonging to a kind of category or area, they were just particular films that were very interesting. I certainly was aware of independent attitudes in film because of George Dunning.
On one side you had the more commercially based filmmakers and on the other side the more experimental filmmakers, and just now you mentioned you didn't see a difference between experimental and commercially minded independent films in the 1950s. However, in the early 1970s was there any sense of division between these two groups of filmmakers who wanted to make commercial films and those who were more interested in experimental films?
That brings to mind Don Owen, who was kind of a special category. He made documentary films, Toronto Jazz is one that he made which I am actually in. He did something that seemed mildly revolutionary at the time, which was to concentrate on here and not look elsewhere. The most extreme example is a wonderful film he made called Cowboy and Indian, which is a film about the two painters who were two of originators of the Artists Jazz Band, Bob Markel and Gord Rayner. Making a film about them was a very exciting thing because it was a recognition of them as interesting individuals, which they were, and also what they did as music and what they did as art was also interesting and it wasn't provincial.
What do you mean by provincial?
Often in the past when there is a Capital where things are happening, it was once Paris and then it became New York, and something that would happen away from the capital would be called provincial. At the time it's suggesting that certain values can be superior to other values. This was something that Greg Curnoe was fighting against. It was felt that good work could only be done in New York. If you were living in a small town like London, Ontario, you hardly could do good work, which is silly. But that is what provincial seems to be.
It's interesting that you mention that because in previous interviews that you have done you stated that, and I’m paraphrasing, you and Joyce Wieland needed to go to New York in order to find out what was possible for yourselves as artists. It sounds like you subscribed to that idea that only good work can come out of New York, but then your opinion on that has since changed.
Yes. Starting in the 50s I was watching very closely what was going on in New York and being very affected by it. It was a fantastic period creatively, starting with the so called abstract expressionists. We used to go to New York and see shows and listen to music a couple of times a year. In a way I was more involved with the New York scene as opposed to the Toronto as far as what I found interesting and what affected my own work. It was not so much for Joyce. I thought that since I was involved by watching what was going on there and was being affected by it, I might as well be there and see what that is like.
Another thing that is kind of odd is that I decided to stop playing music. Before that I had been playing quite a bit. For about a year and a half, and I made my living from music. I was playing every night. I felt that I was doing too many thing and that going to New York would be a good time to stop making music. That didn't work out, and I kept going on.
You felt that when you moved to New York you would have to make a decision between painting, sculpting, filmmaking, and music?
No, filmmaking was one of the mediums that I was interested in. One of the points of The Walking Women works, which started in 1961, was to use the same form in every medium possible. That's much too simplified, but I really was interested in using different mediums. New York Eye and Ear Control, which was done in 1964, is a Walking Woman work. It's a film that uses that outline. I didn't think of myself as filmmaker but as an artist that uses different mediums.
Going back to the time when you came back to Toronto, there is one institution which is mentioned quite a bit and it seemed to be a pillar in the Toronto scene, that institution being Rochdale College. Can you elaborate on any interactions you had with the college?
The CFMDC had offices in Rochdale.
Were you ever involved in any classes there? Were you ever asked to teach?
During the 1960s I had long hair and I took every drug, so I was very fashionable I guess. [laughs]
[laughing] I guess then you likely would have been to Rochdale every now and then.
Its funny I don't remember more about Rochdale. I was certainly in that building and probably did go to the CFMDC. I think one of the film magazines had offices there.
Do you remember which one?
No, I can't remember now. Maybe that's wrong.
Speaking of the CFMDC, how did your relationship with the CFMDC begin?
When I had some films and I wanted to have them distributed I went to them. The CFMDC's model was the [same as the] New York Filmmaker's Co-Op, but I don't know when I would have gotten involved with them. I was on the board for awhile, but I'm not sure which years that would have been. It would have been after 1967, because I didn't have much to distribute much before that, so it probably coincided with Wavelength.
After you came back from New York you mentioned a few times...
MS: I should clarify that. It wasn't just coming back, there was an overlapping period during the 1970s...for example I was making my film Rameau's Nephew, which is a four and half hour long film that took three years to make, and I was making it at the time when we were moving back to Toronto, but we still kept our loft in New York. So 72/73 we were in New York quite frequently. We had our own place. So there is overlap there that isn't quite decisive.
There is a transition period.
Yes.
You have mentioned that the CFMDC was influenced by the New York Film Co-Op and their model and how they did things. When you were first made aware of the CFMDC or the Toronto Film Co-Op, what were your initial perceptions on they were doing and how they were effecting filmmaking in Toronto?
It sounds like they were just imitators, but they weren't. There was sort of a movement that we were all involved in, that had it's strongest aspects in New York but, for example, affected London, England as well. There were filmmakers there. It was a kind of a movement that Toronto was involved in, like San Francisco, for example, who had a longer history with of involvement with experimental film. There was a big movement that Toronto was apart of.
And at that time New York would have been the epicentre of that movement?
New York was certainly the centre. However, there are exceptional people like Bruce Elder who has been making films and has been active as a teacher, and he has had a very big influence and his books are fantastic too. I think he was emerging on to the scene during the late 60s as well, and he was certainly one of the most important people who came up then.
In our research we have found that you have done a few collaborations with other filmmakers, most notably Joyce Wieland and Keith Lock. Well, in the case of Keith Lock he worked for you as a cameraman on one of your films...
Yes. We made my book, Cover to Cover, he was one of my photographers and we also shot Presents, which was made in 1982. I have known Keith since probably 1970, something like that.
Were there any other Toronto based or born filmmakers you were collaborating with at the time, or that you had worked with?
Well, it's a little bit later but Carl Brown and I made a film called Triage (2004) . He is a very fine filmmaker. He lives in the suburbs near Toronto, and isn't very active, but his own films are very interesting. Speaking of collaborations I did a film called To Lavoisier (1991), which I worked with him on the processing of the film. He's one of the first people to get involved with the chemistry of film development, changing the mixes of chemicals and temperature duration.
I'm going to move on now to talk a bit about Standard Time. Regina Cornwall, in her book “The Film and Photographs of Michael Snow”, states that “it is clear that after completing Wavelength Snow had immediately pursued his camera investigations in another area”. What was it about experimenting with the formal aspects of camera movements such as zooms, pans, and tilts that interested you over other aspects of film construction such as editing? What drew your curiosity?
The effects produced by moving the camera in different ways are something that were very particular to cinema. The zoom is not something the eyes can do, it's an optical thing, it's what the camera can do and what a lens can do. You are seeing something that is technological and aesthetic. The movement of the camera produces effects that are not optical either in the sense that they imitate the eye. These are things that are particular to cinema, and I wanted to make films that used the essentials of what cinema can do. Editing is certainly one thing, you can cut a film up into any number of pieces but I don't think it's visually or optically related like camera movement.
It started with New York Eye and Ear Control, I started looking at the whole situation of simultaneous sound and picture, and sync sound is terrific in that you can see a representation of the head and the mouth moves and you hear the person talk. I unraveled that with Rameau's Nephew. That's another thing I got involved with was investigating image/sound relations because they are something that had never existed before.
After Wavelength I became interested in panning, and Standard Time was a kind of a sketch where I was teaching myself about the effects of panning, from which I made a more formal use of panning with <---->, which also lead to La Region Centrale, which is a more involved and complicated use of panning.
With Standard Time you say that it was a kind of sketch, and how at the time you were experimenting with the panning and what it could do. What then lead you to also play with the sound and the volume that did and did not sync with the visuals?
I was doing a kind of panning of coming and going with the sound, done with the dial on a radio, turning the volume in and out and changing stations. I started to play the radio apart from Standard Time, and I didn't know that John Cage had been there first, and then I found out about that later, but I started to treat the radio like an instrument. In Standard Time what happens to the sound is not in sync with the picture. What happens to the sound is related to what happens in the image, but is appropriate to sound in the way that what happens to the image is appropriate for what happens to an image. Does that make sense? [laugh]
Yes! While I have been looking into Standard Time I have read a number of previous interviews where you have talked about it and I have seen it pop up in the programmes of retrospectives, and it seems almost exclusively in those programmes that they use your own description of the film, which was it was you home, wife, camera, radio and turtle movie. They don't seem to describe it beyond that, and it seems like they consider it to be a minor work. How do you feel it fits into your larger body of work?
Standard Time was much more improvised than Wavelength, which sounds kind of strange. Wavelength involved quite a lot of planning and there are lots of accidents in it and improvising because I wouldn't know what would happen when I changed the light this way, or used a gel. It was very experimental in some ways, but also very formal. I planned exactly what was going to happen as the camera goes. I divided up all of my rolls of film, knowing that this one was going to be used after 15 minutes, this roll was going to be used after 30 minutes, and so on, so it was very planned out. With Standard Time the impetus was I just wanted to find out more about panning, what changes the image: the speed and the proximity to the subject and all of those things. I found myself shooting it, completely improvised, in the home movie sense, which I hadn't done before really. That's why I call it my home movie. It was where Joyce and I lived at that time. It's more casual than any of the other films. The only other place I improvise that much is at the end of Presents. The last hour is all hand held panning.
In any case, that is what I meant by it was my home movie. It was my home, but also it was more like a "home movie" than any of the other films.
It's interesting that you would describe it like that, and now I find that I have an image of you in my mind of you waking up one day and saying "Well, ok, now I'm just going to twirl the camera around on a tripod and see what happens".
It was almost like that, yes. Whatever day that was, I had the film, and I don't know if I planned to have the film, but it was all done very casually. It is autobiographical because it was shot where I lived and my nude wife was in it. I thought of it a little bit later as being somewhat Brakhagian, and none of my other work was.
Going back to some previous interviews, and even in this interview you have used some of these terms to describe it, you have called Standard Time a sketch, an investigation, and an experimentation. Based on that and how you also describe the making of the film as being very casual, was there ever a time when you considered not releasing it, or trying to limit it's distribution in any way?
No, that's interesting you should say that. I always liked it, and it sort of took me by surprise that I did it. Whereas with the other ones they involved quite a bit of planning. It's strange that it should be surprising because I was very involved in improvisation in music, and I never made a conscious choice, but I never applied that improvisation interest to film.
Was there something specifically about the medium that drew you into the idea that film should be planned out, at least initially?
It seems that I thought there should be preparation.
It's interesting because at that time the French New Wave was beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I didn't think about what I did in relation to that kind of film at all.
Would you have been aware of what they were doing with improvisation?
I played jazz for awhile, and pretty much all the various styles of jazz are variations of a theme. You play a tune and then you play variations on the chord structure, and then you play the tune again. Well, I was getting more and more involved in free improvisation, which is themeless at the beginning. One part of my artistic existence was working on pure improvisation in music and in a certain sense it was being taken care of. It didn't occur to me to improvise with film.
Also, I would say that would be one of the things that Brakhage did, that he improvised with film, and I didn't want to do that. [laughs]
When you developed your film and got back the images did you go back and reshoot anything?
No. It's edited, and things are shifted a little bit from when they were shot chronologically, but there isn't that much editing involved. The sound was done separately. No, I didn't shoot anything additionally.
A lot of the editing would have been done in camera?
It's mostly the way it was shot, yes.
I have read in an interview, and not I'm not sure which one, that you think of Wavelength, Standard Time and La Region Central as a kind of trilogy of experimentation that you had done with camera movement, but the visual differences between Wavelength and Standard Time are so stark. In Wavelength you have a long, protracted zoom, and then in Standard Time you have essentially circular and vertical movement without the use of a zoom. I found it interesting that they could even be considered being linked in any way because visually they are strikingly different. Can we relate that to the improvisational nature of Standard Time, in that Wavelength is more structured and thus more rigid in what it tries to accomplish, whereas Standard Time was more playful?
I think ←→ is more rigid, but I think that is one of it's good qualities because it is very hard, and I think that's right because it’s percussion. This is interesting in a way, because another film I made at the time called One Second in Montreal, which is also thoroughly formal because it's only about duration, about how long an image is on the screen. It's also silent. It's very pure. You might be able to improvise something like that, but it was done mathematically. There are so many frames of this, 60 frames of that, than 50 frames of that. Right from the very beginning I was interested in composing with film, and improvisation also requires documentation. It's quite an interesting point you brought up. It does have a little bit to do with improvisation in music and not wanting to do that with film, but to do something else with film.