La région centrale (1971)

To celebrate National Canadian Film Day, The Cinematheque presents Michael Snow’s magisterial La région centrale (1971), a three-hour, 360-degree study of a seemingly otherworldly mountaintop in northern Quebec, and a relevatory work for a 21-year-old Chantal Akerman.

This free National Canadian Film Day program is presented in conjunction with Cinematheque’s spring retrospective “Chantal Akerman: No Home Movies.” 

At the screening, READ Books will feature a selection of Michael Snow publications available for purchase, along with related publications including titles on filmmaker Chantal Akerman. 

For a 21-year-old Chantal Akerman entering the avant-garde cradle of New York in the early  ’70s, watching Michael Snow’s La région centrale was a formative encounter:  “The sensory experience I underwent was extraordinarily powerful and physical. It was a revelation for me, that you could make a film without telling a story.” In the magisterial three-hour work, made in the twilight of the American lunar missions, the camera, attached to a robotic arm, casts its roving 360-degree eye across a remote, seemingly otherworldly mountaintop in northern Quebec. Set to a soundtrack of waves and pulses emitting from the control box of the automated apparatus, La région centrale  “transports its audience to a rugged Canadian landscape that is discovered at noon and then explored in seventeen episodes of dizzying motion as the machine’s shadow lengthens, night falls, and light returns.”

– Martha Langford, Art Canada Institute

The Cinematheque, founded in 1972, is a film institute and media education centre devoted to understanding the art and history of Canadian and international cinema and the impact of moving images and screen-based media in our lives. Their public activities include a year-round calendar of curated film exhibitions devoted to important classic and contemporary films and filmmakers; and an array of community outreach programs offering interactive learning opportunities in film appreciation, filmmaking, media literacy, and critical thinking.

The Cinematheque’s collections include a Film Reference Library housing thousands of film-related books and periodicals, and a West Coast Film Archive holding some 2,000 Canadian motion pictures, including a core collection of historically and artistically significant British Columbian works.