
Michael Snow
Michael Snow was considered one of Canada's most important artists, and one of the world's leading experimental filmmakers. His wide-ranging and multidisciplinary oeuvre explored the possibilities inherent in different mediums and genres, and encompassed film and video, painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and music. Snow's practice comprised a thorough investigation into the nature of perception. While Snow early established himself as a successful painter and musician in his native Toronto, it was his 1962 move to New York City that marked the beginning of his rise to international prominence. He entered into a long-lasting and fruitful dialogue with downtown Manhattan's artistic avant garde, exchanging ideas with figures such as Yvonne Rainer, Philip Glass, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Foreman, and developing of some of his most ambitious and influential works to date. His 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control documents his growing involvement with the burgeoning free jazz movement, and the soundtrack boasts a lineup that includes Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, and Sonny Murray. Snow would continue to pursue improvised music, both on his own and in ensembles such as Toronto's CCMC. The generation and reception of sound in the broader sense emerged as one of his main concerns, reflected in performance and tape works that share qualities with contemporaneous experiments by composers like Steve Reich. At the same time, Snow made alliances within the underground film scene centered around Jonas Mekas' Filmmakers' Cinematheque, an experience that encouraged him to find ways to transfer his concerns with music and photography into the realm of the moving image. He assisted Hollis Frampton on films such as Nostalgia(1971), and it was legendary director Ken Jacobs whose loan of equipment helped Snow create his most famous and influential work, the groundbreaking 1967 film Wavelength. Wavelength, which notoriously includes a 45-minute camera zoom within a fixed frame, remains one of the most studied and admired works of structuralist filmmaking. Other of Snow's films of this period, including Back and Forth (1969) and La Région Centrale (1971) similarly explored the mechanics of filmmaking to simultaneously investigate the functional processes of cinema and of thinking itself. In the 1970s and 1980s, Snow, responding to a growing institutional commitment to his work, experimented more with large-scale installations, including public sculptures such as Flightstop (1979) and The Audience (1988-89). In recent years, he focused on the specific nature and potential of digital media, yielding works like the video-film *Corpus Callosum (2002). Regardless of artistic genre, Snow consistently engaged in an analytical discourse on the nature of consciousness and experience, language and temporality. He died on January 5th, 2023.
- Known ForDirecting
- Born10 December 1929 (age 96)
- Place of BirthToronto, Canada
Michael Snow

- Known ForDirecting
- Born10 December 1929 (age 96)
- Place of BirthToronto, Canada

Cityscape
2019

Waivelength
2019

L’œil omnidirectionnel de Michael Snow
2019

Portrait of Snow
2016

EXPRMNTL
2016

Snow In Vienna
2013

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
2013
Michael Snow Portrait
2011

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
2011

Puccini Conservato
2009

Reverberlin
2006

Sshtoorrty
2005

Triage
2004

WVLNT
2003

*Corpus Callosum
2002
Solar Breath
2002
The Living Room
2001

Prelude
2000

Preludes
2000

Birth of a Nation
1997

Michael Snow Up Close
1996

To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror
1991
See You Later
1990

Seated Figures
1988

I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
1987

Home Movies 1971-81
1985
Funnel Piano
1983

Snow Business
1983

So Is This
1982

Presents
1981
Grand Opera: An Historical Romance
1979
Cinématon V
1979

Cinématon n°44 : Michael Snow
1979

Cinématon
1978

Breakfast (Table-Top Dolly)
1976

‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen
1974

Two Sides to Every Story
1974

Dream Life
1972

La Région Centrale
1971

Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia
1971
A Casing Shelved
1970
Side Seat Paintings Slides Sound Film
1970

The Stone Age
1970

Back and Forth
1969

One Second in Montreal
1969
Dripping Water
1969
Seminar
1969

Snowblind
1968

A Lecture
1968

Wavelength
1967

Standard Time
1967

For Life, Against the War
1967

Bill's Hat
1967

Manual of Arms
1966

Short Shave
1965

New York Eye and Ear Control
1964

Little Walk
1964

Toronto Jazz
1963
