It was the early 80s, probably 1981, winter, a Saturday night, La région centrale is being shown at the Anthology space in Soho. I go by myself. Just a few months before, as part of the ReCherChez Studio run by Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech in the East Village, a group of us had rented a 16mm print of Wavelength to study it, and that had been most rewarding. I walked to the space. It was snowing and quite chilly. The Anthology was a small theater with a nice screen. There were maybe a couple dozen people there. I didn't recognize anyone. I do recall a group of young Asian men sitting together. I knew that the film had been shot on a specially constructed machine built to let the camera do a 360 degree pan, and Snow was hidden off programming the arm's movement. The soundtrack consisted of the electronic waves of the programming. So I knew what I was to expect.
The film began. A desolate landscape. Quebec. I am sure I had smoked some cannabis on my way to the theater, and I easily settled in to nothing in particular happening for a long time. I just kept watching. I am sure my mind was going off to all kinds of places as I watched, but I never really lost interest watching it go. After a while the pans began to pick up in speed, and eventually the camera began to spin around in a circle as well. The velocity was not very high at first so there was little disorientation, but you could tell there would be. The only human artifact visible was the occasional sight on the ground of the shadow of the arm holding the camera. Otherwise, nothing was visible but a desolate landscape with no people or buildings or anything in a constantly sweeping pan.
After about an hour I began to squirm a bit in my seat. I knew this was a three hour film, and a couple of audience had already walked out. I lasted another fifteen to twenty minutes before I took a break. I used the bathroom, even stepped outside and smoked a cigarette. I recall it was snowing sort of heavily at that time. Then I stepped back inside, where it was warmer and welcome. I went back inside the theater and sat back down. The camera was zooming around much faster now. In short measures the camera started shooting around so swiftly it was impossible to keep up -- then it stopped and went the other direction! Now we were panning back the other way, and it was growing faster again. Then it changed directions again. It was hurtling madly swinging at the end of a tether, and the camera itself was revolving too. The universe was whirling madly before my eyes. It was astonishing and completely disorienting. In that era I was spending a couple of hours a week simply spinning in a circle, with other friends, at the studio, to focus myself physically and mentally. This film was an embodiment of that spinning.
Time completely stopped for this. So did my mind. Suddenly my thoughts weren't racing, suddenly I was deeply focused.
The movement no the screen slowed down until it was back to the slow spin it had begun with. You could feel the film coming to a stop. The room went black then the house lights came up. The group of us there, some folk had certainly left and not come back, probably less than a dozen of us slowly rising to our feet and looking around at each other. Again, I remember mostly Asian guys -- in fact, it was an all male audience. I had sweat dripping down my face. It was winter and snowing but watching La région centrale made me perspire.
No other experience of mechanical images has ever done to me what La région centrale did. I later went to the NYC premiere of his So Is This film and got to hear Michael Snow speak and got to shake his hand. I enjoyed that film, and I've also seen Back and Forth with an audience, and even went to a screening of Wavelength again in 2000 at the Hammer Museum here in Los Angeles. And I can rhapsodize about Wavelength at length, about meanings and all that. But nothing has ever come close to that viewing of La région centrale in Soho in the early 80s as an authentically startling alien experience. Even now, other than describing it, I cannot say why it was so powerful or why that viewing has resonated with me for over 35 years now. Maybe the central region is me?
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