La région centrale
directed by Michael Snow, Canada 1971, 180'
This classic of avant-garde cinema – a three-hour long film shot on tape with a specially constructed robot filming the uninhabited landscape of central Canada according to its own mechanical measurements – is perhaps more current today than it was at the time of its creation. It can be read not only as a study of the camera’s mechanical eye, but also as an experiment that breaks human habits as well as the anthropocentric view of nature and landscape. During the screening, this hierarchy disappears – we no longer know where is up or where is down, or what is the horizon. The camera, therefore, becomes a causative actor that can change our perception of the environment and help create new relationships with it.
