Like his most famous film Wavelength, Michael Snow's Back and Forth uses a specific formal/mechanical property of the cinematic apparatus (in this case, horizontal and vertical panning) to sever the link between the camera and what it depicts. In narrative cinema, the camera's movements are dictated by the action it is filming. In Back and Forth the reverse is true. For the first 35 minutes, the camera repeatedly pans across a classroom where incidents that echo its movement occasionally occur: a janitor sweeps the floor; a couple pass a ball between them, etc. The velocity of the panning gradually increases until the room becomes a blur, at which point the film abruptly cuts to equally rapid vertical pans which gradually slow down throughout the rest of the film. Back and Forth plays with the idea of the camera as a metaphor for consciousness. Snow emphasizes this by making that consciousness independent -- capable of instigating its own actions instead of simply recording what happens in front of it.
by Tom Vick
synopsis
