Wavelength is a short, forty-five minute film that made the reputation of Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow. It was filmed in 1966 and released the following year. It is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney described as "structural film." Michael Snow (born December 10, 1929) is a Canadian artist, film maker, and musician. ... Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) was an avant-garde film-maker. ... Roswell Rudd (born Roswell Hopkins Rudd, Jr. ... Joyce Wieland (June 30, 1931 – June 27, 1998) was a Canadian experimental film maker and mixed media artist. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Short subject is an American film industry term that historically has referred to any film in the format of two reels, or approximately 20 minutes running time, or less. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... Michael Snow (born December 10, 1929) is a Canadian artist, film maker, and musician. ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... Structural film was an American experimental film movement. ...

Outline

What follows may be considered a kind of "spoiler," but as the plot is largely ignored in this film, so a description of plot will not "spoil" anything.

Wavelength consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three "character" scenes. In the first scene two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio. Later, a man (played by filmmaker Hollis Frampton) enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before. Strawberry Fields Forever is the title of a 1967 song recorded by The Beatles. ... Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) was an avant-garde film-maker. ...

In the end, one can hear what sound like police sirens, but could just as well be a part of the musical score, a distinct piece of minimalist music that pairs tones at random. These tones shift in frequency (and in "wavelength") as the camera analyzes the space of the anonymous apartment. What begins as a view of the full apartment zooms (the zoom is not precisely continuous as the camera does change angle slightly, noticably near the very end) and changes focus slowly across the forty-five minutes, only to stop and come into perfect focus on a photograph of the sea on the wall. The wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a wave pattern. ...

Structural Film

According to P. Adams Sitney, the trend in American avant-garde cinema during the late 1940s and 1950s (such as the work of Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage) was towards "increased complexity" (369). Since the mid-1960s, filmmakers such as Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad and Joyce Weiland produced works where simplicity was foregrounded. This tendency Sitney labelled "structural film." The four characteristics of structural film are "fixed camera position…the flicker effect, loop printing, and rephotography off the screen." (370) Sitney describes Snow as the "dean of stuctural film-makers" who "utilizes the tension" of Wavelength's use of a "fixed-frame and…the flexibility of the fixed tripod" (374). Where Sitney describes stuctural film as a "working process," Stephen Heath in Questions of Cinema finds Wavelength "seriously wanting" in that the "implied…narrative [makes Wavelength] in some ways a retrograde step in cinematic form" (166). The principle theme of Wavelength to Heath is the "question of the cinematic institution of the subject of film" rather than the apparatus of filmmaking itself (129). Maya Deren Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. ... Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) Stan Brakhage (January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. ... Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) was an avant-garde film-maker. ... Paul Jeffrey Sharits (February 7, 1943 - July 8, 1993) was an artist an film maker. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ...

Versions

In 2003, Snow released WVLNT (or Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time), a shorter (1/3 of the original time) but significantly altered version of the original film. 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A shortened and altered version of Michael Snows 1967 experimental film Wavelength (film), released in 2003 by the director. ...

Honors

Wavelength was named #85 in the 2001 Village Voice Critics' list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The film has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada’s audio-visual heritage.[1] This article is about the year 2001. ... The Village Voice is a New York City-based weekly newspaper featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. ...

Distribution

• Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Bibliography

• Cornwell, Regina. Snow Seen: The Films and Photographs of Michael Snow. Toronto: PMA Books, 1980.
• Elder, Bruce R. Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1989.
• Heath, Stephen. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
• Shedden, Jim (ed.) The Michael Snow Project: Presence and Absence (The Films of Michael Snow 1965-1991). Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1995.
• Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.