A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

which, as you said earlier, involved works of many kinds in many places. A lot of it was what I call lost works: making things that were outside, in public spaceson subways, in the street, in bookstores . . . it had a lot of range, despite the fact that it was concerned with this single outline.

The main thing I was trying to do was concentrate on visual art and get a gallery. I watched everything that was going on and gradually met people. That's when I met Hollis Frampton. I first noticed him at openings at Green Gallery. He was very noticeable! And he was at every opening. Gradually, I started talking to him, and at first I only knew that he was a photographer who was interested in art. I guess when I first met him he hadn't made any films.

MacDonald:

When did you meet him?

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Snow's Walking Woman out for a stroll.

Snow:

Probably 1963, 1964. I went to New York in 1963.

MacDonald:

In

The Walking Woman Works

you were putting the same figure in place after place, in serial fashion, which has a good deal in common with film. Were you conscious of that connection at the time?

Snow:

Well, in the work itself there was a lot of sequential stuff. There are several pieces that are, say, four or five variations of the same figure. And, yeah, I did think there was something filmic about it. And then in 1964 I made

New York Eye and Ear Control

. I had had the idea for that film in Toronto.

When I first went to New York, I met Ben Park, who worked for one of the television stations I think, though he also produced films in a small way, I guess. I told him my ideas for

New York Eye and Ear Control,

and he said that he'd finance it. So we shot quite a bit of stuff, including a sequence of Marcel Duchamp and Joyce walking across the street, seen through a mask cutout of the Walking Woman. Anyway, Park finally decided against going ahead with the project and kept what I had shot. There wasn't too much enmity there, the film just stopped. Later on, I decided to try to do it myself.

MacDonald: New York Eye and Ear Control

combines your fascination with music and

The Walking Woman Works

. It's as if you were learning how to work with film as a means of getting this other work

Page 60

down, but then, when you were done with that film, you were ready to be involved with film at a level comparable to what you'd achieved in music, painting, and sculpture.

Snow:

Yeah, although

New York Eye and Ear Control

was interesting in itself. As far as I know, I invented the idea of putting art worksparts of

The Walking Woman Works

out in the world, and then documenting the results in another work. The photographic piece,

Four to Five

[1962], was the very first time I did this, and the film expanded the idea. The business of making a work by documenting some action that you take hadn't happened yet, as far as I know, and I'm kind of proud of the priority of it. On one hand,

New York Eye and Ear Control

was another transformation of

The Walking Woman,

but I was also trying to work with the possibilities of the medium, especially with duration.

One of the things I wanted to do in the film was to bring two aspects of myself together. I used to refer to it as a classical side and a romantic side, or Apollonian and Dionysian. At the time, I felt I was rather schizophrenic. At any rate, the imagery is measured and calm, but beside it is this expressionist, romantic music. Most of the action is in the sound.

I already felt objections to the general use of sound in films, especially to the way music is subordinated to image. Even the greatest work of the greatest artist, J. S. Bach, is often used to set up a certain attitude in commercial films, and I've hated that for years. I wanted to do something where the music could

survive

and not only be support for the image. I think I accomplished that in

New York Eye and Ear Control

.

MacDonald:

Was

New York Eye and Ear Control

shown a lot? At what point did you become part of the New York underground film scene?

Snow: