Film Categories: Landscape

  • Scenes de la Vie Francaise: La Ciotat

    Whereas throughout the film “Scenes de la vie francaise: Paris” the image is formed by means of relatively long sections recorded on different dates, in “Scenes de la vie Francaise: La Ciotat” the image showing the port, the dry docks, the workers leaving the ship yards, a tanker launched, fishermen and the beach, rests on the interweaving of short moments. Hence in the case of this film the configuration is composed of two distinct but closely situated durations.

  • Scenes de la Vie Francaise: Paris

    “Scenes de la vie francaise: Paris” is one of a series of films: Arles, Paris, La Ciotat, Avignon. All four films have a similar organizational procedure in that their material is woven together on an ordinary printer according to a certain pattern. The problems that arise are tackled, however, in a slightly different way in the case of each film. In “Scenes de la vie Francaise: Paris” several places – Jardin du Luxembourg, Place de la Republique, Rue St. Antoine, Canal St. Martin, Place de la Bastille – are presented by the means of a composition of frames recorded at…

  • Batteries

    As the only winter port on Canada’s Atlantic coast during WW II, Halifax was an active part of the Allies’ war effort. At the start of the war, thousands of dollars were poured into the construction of concrete embattlements to defend Halifax Harbour against attack, and ultimately, to guard against possible land invasion. The attack never came. The filmmaker presents a striking, ironic contrast between the footage of the batteries as they stand today, crumbling and abandoned with narratives that recall the anxious, sometimes frantic fear of an enemy attack.

  • Seated Figures

    “Seated Figures” is built with images which are all variations of eight movements on the screen: moving up, down, to the left or to the right, and the four possible diagonal movements. These movements are occasionally interrupted by holds (freeze frames). All the images move parallel to the ‘picture plane’ (the screen). The film could be considered a history of roads. Starting on asphalt the film moves to gravel, then sand, and gradually onto more and more rocky surfaces, occasionally passing through streams. Vegetation appears, roads become paths until finally the images are fields with flowers. The images were all…

  • Beach Events

    This film completes a trilogy of landscape/poetry films, which include “Waterworx” (1982) and “Landfall” (1983), and was shot near the family home on the Northumberland Strait in Prince Edward Island. In writing the text for “Beach Events”, I wanted to challenge the cinema’s dominant present tense by imitating primitive “event” poetry, referring superficially to action present on the screen, but gradually slipping out of synchronization with its referent. This practice, together with reading a kind of sub-conscious, internal monologue (also based on the film’s events, but only those past and future), helps the viewer transcend the spectacle of the present,…

  • Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion

    The bus stopped on the Mexican highway, placing us in full view of a young boy, motionless, on the hot pavement. In this film, the incident is revealed through a poetic text, derived from my written journals. The poetry mixes primarily with Mexican streetscapes which compliment the text in a tonal sense. Most images are 28 seconds long, the “breath” of the 16mm Bolex camera. A lone saxophone (Mike Callich) weaves its way through the narrative, blending to make stronger the tones and accentuations of the images. (PH)

  • Sparkill Ave

    Named after the street on which he lives in Tappan, New York, “Sparkhill Ave” continues the autobiographical line of inquiry through family, friends, neighbours, community, and Americana that began with “T.Z. “(1979) and passed through “Trial Balloons” (1982), “Bang!” (1986), and “A Frog on the Swing” (1988). In addition to his usual improvisations on form, colour, and motion, Breer collages and animates photographs of street scenes, parades and seasonal variations in the landscape. Combined with an unusual-for-him continuously running synthesizer soundtrack, “Sparkill Ave” paints a portrait of a small town, a seemingly closed system that’s never the less informed by…

  • Spring

    This brightly hued cine-poem is a walk through the natural world, its slowly gathered rounds of superimposition conjuring a season of renewal and re-awakening.

  • Staccato

    Love, sex and death in Paris. The films were built frame-by-frame in-camera, each being a 100 foot roll. No cuts were made. Number 1-Esmeralda: A rampage through cathédrale Notre-Dame, with thanks to Victor H. Always nice when Esmeralda asks Quasimodo “Pourquoi m’avez-vous sauvé?” isn’t it… Number 2-Jezebel: Not a rampage but a secret run through rue st-Denis and Montmartre, le Moulin Rouge, Place Pigalle. The sex trade in Paris as seen from a dark and bright night. Number 3-Shiva: Not a secret run but a flight through the sprawling, centuries-old cemetery, Père Lachaise. A landscape of old glass, old iron…

  • Standard Time

    “In Snow’s ‘Standard Time’ a waist-high camera shuttles back and forth, goes up and down, picking up small, elegantly-lighted square effects around a living room very much like its owner: ordered but not prissy. A joyously spiritual little film, it contains both his singular stoicism and the germinal ideas of his other films, each one like a thesis, proposing a particular relationship between image, time and space.” – Manny Farber, Art Forum