EC: <---> (BACK AND FORTH)

Directed by Michael Snow

1969 / 50min

Restored by Anthology Film Archives with funding provided by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Dan DeVincent, Simon Lund, and Adam Wangerin (Cineric, Inc.). “This neat, finely tuned, hypersensitive film examines the outside and inside of a banal prefab classroom, stares at an asymmetrical space so undistinguished that it’s hard to believe the whole movie is confined to it, and has this neckjerking camera gimmick which hits a wooden stop arm at each end of its swing. Basically it’s a perpetual motion film which ingeniously builds a sculptural effect by insisting on time-motion to the point where the camera’s swinging arcs and white wall field assume the hardness, the dimensions of a concrete beam. “In such a hard, drilling work, the wooden clap sounds are a terrific invention, and, as much as any single element, create the sculpture. Seeming to thrust the image outward off the screen, these clap effects are timed like a metronome, sometimes occurring with torrential frequency.” –Manny Farber, ARTFORUM, 1970