{"id":1888,"date":"2007-09-19T20:00:25","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2018-01-25T14:55:19","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:55:19","slug":"la-region-centrale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2007\/09\/19\/la-region-centrale\/","title":{"rendered":"La R\u00e9gion Centrale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/p>\n<p><strong>LA R\u00c9GION CENTRALE<br \/>\nZXZW Festival at Tilburg FilmFoyer<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Wednesday 19 September 2007, at 8pm<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i class=\"essay-title\">La R\u00e9gion Centrale<\/i> is arguably the most spectacular experimental film made anywhere in the world, and for John W. Locke, writing in <i>Artforum<\/i> in 1973, it was \u201cas fine and important a film as I have ever seen.\u201d If ever the term \u201cmetaphor on vision\u201d needed to be applied to a film it should be to this one. [&#8230;] For this project he enlisted the help of Pierre Abaloos to design and build a machine which would allow the camera to move smoothly about a number of different axes at various speeds, while supported by a short column, where the lens of the camera could pass within inches of the ground and zoom into the infinity of the sky. Snow placed his device on a peak near Sept \u00cesles in Quebec\u2019s r\u00e9gion centrale and programmed it to provide a series of continuously changing views of the landscape. Initially, the camera pans through 360\u00b0 passes which map out the terrain, and then it begins to provide progressively stranger views (on its side, upside down) through circular and back-and-forth motions. The weird soundtrack was constructed from the electronic sounds of the programmed controls which are sometimes in synch with the changing framing on screen and sometimes not. (Peter Rist)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Michael Snow, La R\u00e9gion Centrale, Canada, 1971, 180 minutes<\/strong><\/p>\n<a onclick=\"wpex_toggle(1001637573, 'PROGRAMME NOTES', 'Read less'); return false;\" class=\"wpex-link\" id=\"wpexlink1001637573\" href=\"#\">PROGRAMME NOTES<\/a><div class=\"wpex_div\" id=\"wpex1001637573\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>LA R\u00c9GION CENTRALE<\/strong><br \/>\nZXZW Festival at Tilburg FilmFoyer<br \/>\nTuesday 19 September 2007, at 9pm<\/p>\n<p><strong>LA R\u00c9GION CENTRALE<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Michael Snow, Canada, 1971, 16mm, colour, sound, 180 minutes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>La R\u00e9gion Centrale<\/em> was made during five days of shooting on a deserted mountain top in Northern Quebec. During the shooting, the vertical and horizontal alignment as well as the tracking speed were all determined by the camera\u2019s settings. Anchored to a tripod, the camera turned a complete 360 degrees, craned itself skyward, and circled in all directions. Because of the unconventional camera movement, the result was more than merely a film that documented the film location\u2019s landscape. Surpassing that, this became a film expressing as its themes the cosmic relationships of space and time. Catalogued here were the raw images of a mountain existence, plunged (at that time) in its distance from civilization, embedded in cosmic cycles of light and darkness, warmth and cold. (Martina Sauerwald)<\/p>\n<p>This new, three hour film by the Canadian Michael Snow is an extraordinary cinematic monument. No physical action, not even the presence of man, a fabulous game with nature and machine which puts into question our perceptions, our mental habits, and in many respects renders moribund existing cinema: the latest Fellini, Kubrick, Bu\u00f1uel etc. For <em>La R\u00e9gion Centrale<\/em>, Snow had a special camera apparatus constructed by a technician in Montreal, an apparatus capable of moving in all directions: horizontally, vertically, laterally or in a spiral. The film is one continuous movement across space, intercutting occasionally the X serving as a point of reference and permitting one to take hold of stable reality. Snow has chosen to film a deserted region, without the least trace of human life, 100 miles to the north of Sept-Isles in the province of Quebec: a sort of plateau without trees, opening onto a vast circular prospect of the surrounding mountains. In the first frames, the camera disengages itself slowly from the ground in a circular movement. Progressively, the space fragments, vision inverts in every sense, light everywhere dissolves appearance. We become insensible accomplices to a sort of cosmic movement. A sound track, rigorously synchronized, composed from the original sound which programmed the camera, supplies a permanent counterpoint. Michael Snow pushes toward the absurd the essential nature of this &#8216;seventh&#8217; art which is endlessly repeated as being above the visual. He catapults us into the heart of a world before speech, before arbitrarily composed meanings, even subject. He forces us to rethink not only cinema, but our universe. (Louis Marcorelles, Le Monde, 1972)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#top\">Back to top<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alina Rudnitskaya\u2019s humanistic approach to documentary filmmaking often brings out the humour in her chosen subjects. As an introduction to her work, this programme depicts three diverse groups of contemporary Russian women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zxzw-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}