A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

. 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

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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:

Before Joyce and I got to New York, Bob Cowan was already there. He's from Toronto. In fact, he went to the high school I went to, Upper Canada College. And when Joyce and I went to New York on visits, we would see him occasionally. Sometimes we'd drive all night, and we'd park outside his place in Brooklyn and have a nap, then wake him up at eight o'clock. We used to get stoned and start driving, it was very nice. One time I drove all the way from Toronto to New York whistling Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk tunes. But anyway, on one of these visits Bob said, 'There's two friends of mine coming over with a film they just made. Do you want to see it?' And it was George and Mike Kuchar. They were nineteen. They had just made

A Town Called Tempest

[1963.].

MacDonald:

A wonderful film!

Snow:

Their accents knocked us out. Anyway, we set up this little 8mm projector and showed the film. And Joyce and I were amazed. It

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was really, really inspiring. After thatit might have been through Bobwe discovered the Cinematheque screenings. When we were in Toronto, we didn't know there was a genre called ''experimental film.' We had seen Norman McLaren's films and not much else. When we were making our own films, we didn't feel like they were part of a big development. Anyway, we started to go to the Cinematheque and to meet people. Ken Jacobs was one of the first. And he was fabulous in those days, really an amazing man.

I was still saying to myself, 'You should stop this and just do that, or you're just gonna be a dilettante all your life.' I had thought that going to New York would clarify that. In fact, it didn't. I just kept on multiplying my interests.

MacDonald:

You and Joyce were beginning to make films at the same time, and in one instance [

Dripping Water,

1969] you did collaborate. Was there a reason why you didn't collaborate more often?

Snow:

Our work was always independent. We discussed, and looked at work, and helped each other, but we never thought about doing things together. She had her own direction. She was affected by the Kuchar experience in a way that I wasn't. Their work was close to her sensibility in a lot of ways. I was very affected by

A Town Called Tempest