Structuralist filmmaker Michael Snow incorporates elements from the last 50 years of his career to create the experimental feature *Corpus Callosum. Also a painter, photographer, and sculptor, Snow's films focus on the mechanics of the camera and the formalistic possibilities of filmmaking. Like 2002's Waking Life, *Corpus Callosum was shot on video with real-life actors and animated afterwards with Houdini software. Captured in slow zooms and 360-degree pans, the images are continually messed with by various means from high-tech animation to presenting the video in reverse. Due to the digitized stretching and twisting, the characters often switch clothing, genders, and ethnicity in graphic manipulations. Meanwhile, the characters remain indifferent to the exploding images around them. Snow sets the characters in a generic office space where the environment is distorted by their actions. He also uses a living room setting where a family watches a blue sky on the TV, while their media-oversaturated home fluctuates around them. The film also manipulates the basic filmmaking process by placing the credits in the middle. Partially funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, *Corpus Callosum premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
by Andrea LeVasseur
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