Wavelength (1967 film)

Wavelength
A still of the loft from Wavelength
Directed byMichael Snow
Written byMichael Snow
StarringHollis Frampton
Roswell Rudd
Amy Taubin
Joyce Wieland
CinematographyMichael Snow
Edited byMichael Snow
Music byTed Wolff
Release date
  • 1967 (1967)
Running time
45 minutes
CountriesCanada
United States
LanguageEnglish

Wavelength is a 1967 experimental film by Canadian artist Michael Snow. Shot from a fixed camera angle, it depicts a loft space with an extended zoom over the duration of the film. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema,[1] it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967,[2] and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film",[3] calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."[4]

Wavelength is often listed as one of the greatest underground, art house and Canadian films ever made. The film has been designated and preserved as a masterwork by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.[5] In a 1969 review of the film published in Artforum, Manny Farber describes Wavelength as "a singularly unpadded, uncomplicated, deadly realistic way to film three walls, a ceiling and a floor... it is probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence."[6]

  1. ^ MacDonald, Scott (1985). "So Is This". Film Quarterly. 39 (1): 34–37. doi:10.2307/1212281. JSTOR 1212281.
  2. ^ Sitney 1979, p. 375.
  3. ^ Sitney 1979, pp. 368–397.
  4. ^ Sitney 1979, p. 374.
  5. ^ "Trust Blog".
  6. ^ Reprinted in Manny Farber, Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies, London: Studio Vista, 1971, p. 250