Michael Snow
Presents
Institutions (universities, libraries, museums, cultural centres…) must add institutional rights to their order. Rates vary by region (North America, Europe & UK, Asia, Oceania).
Add rightsFormat Blu-ray, DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1981
Language(s) English
Artist(s) Michael Snow
Author(s) Michael Snow, R. Bruce Elder, Max Knowles
Booklet 60 pages (English, French)
Running time 90 min
Films
PRESENTS (1981) 90'
Description
"The apparent vertical scratch in the celluloid that opens Presents literally opens onto a film within a film. When its figure awakens as a woman in a 'real' and unreal setting, the burlesque satire of structural film begins. It's not the camera that moves, but the entire set, in this first of three material 'investigations' of camera movement. In the second, the camera literally invades the set; a sheet of plexiglass placed in front of the tracking shot flattens everything it sees as it zooms through space. Finally, this monster of formalism breaks through the wall of the set and the film shifts to a series of rapidly edited shots, the camera zigzagging along lines of force and moving fields of vision, in an approximation of the eye in nature. Snow pushes us to accept the present moments of vision, but the single drum beat that coincides with each cut in this elegiac section announces each moment of life's irreversible disappearance."
— Philip Monk, Art Express