Back and Forth
- Back and Forth, 1969
Michael Snow
Kanada 1969
16mm, colour, sound, 52min.
"The film is very 'simple'. Part of a room, including a wall with two windows and a corner with a blackboard (it's a classroom) are filmed from a single viewpoint, with a fixed tripod. The camera moves mechanically from left to right, back and forth, never moving beyond the set borders, always capturing the same visual field. The film ... is a structure of forward and backward movement - sometimes people pass by, there is even some sort of festival going on and at one point a class of students is there. But they come and go while the forward and backward movement (up and down in the last quarter of the film) continues. It continues in increasing speed, until nearly everything blurs. Walls, corners, perspectives merge and become flat, two-dimensional and relativity becomes superficial. Nothing is left but energy, light and movement." (Jonas Mekas)
