Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen1974

"Until Rameau's Nephew... no one has exhibited a film that deals so thoroughly with the range of perceptual problems elicited by the sound cinema."
– (M. Keller, Chicago Film Centre)

"...an achievement of the originality and brilliance of Wavelength. Snow embraces the problems on intimacy of language and thought with such variety, clarity and invention and high humour that again he seems to have made a film out of which an entire future movement could be mined."
– (P. Adams Sitney, Soho Weekly News)

I started scripting this film in February 1972 and writing, shooting, mixing, editing and continued till September '74. Some ideas used in it date from 1966 when I recognized in myself the ambition to make an authentic Talking Picture i.e. true to its description, it moves for its content from the facts of the simultaneities of recorded speech and image; it is built from the true units of a 'talking picture' the syllable and the frame. All the possible image/sound relationships centering around people and speech generate the movie-audience relationships: a wide range of emotional possibilities, the experience of seeing/hearing this film.'Speech', 'Language', 'Culture' - their source, their nature...recorded, imaged, prove (?) that in this case a word is worth 1000 pictures. (Michael Snow)

Scripted and Directed by Michael Snow. Shot primarily in Toronto and New York by himself, Keith Lock, Babette Mangolte, David York and others.

Each of Michael Snow's works, spanning across painting, sculpture, video, film, photography, holography, drawing, publishing and music, invites us to experience, question and contemplate the representation, its process and material. RAMEAU'S NEPHEW BY DIDEROT (THANX TO DENNIS YOUNG) BY WILMA SCHOEN illustrates his research both in the visual arts and in sound:
For me, it is an authentic 'talking picture,' built from the true units of the syllable and the frame. All the possible image/sound relationships centering around people and speech generate the movie-audience relationships: a wide range of emotional possibilities; the experience of seeing/hearing this film. 'Speech,' 'Language,' 'Culture' - their sources, their nature... recorded, imaged, prove (?) that in this case a word is worth 1000 pictures. - Michael Snow

DVD PAL box contains: the 4.25 hour film on two DVDs, a 184-page bilingual book by Ivora Cusack and Stefani de Loppinot, prefaced by Michael Snow and translated by Pip Chodorov, analyzing the 25 sequences of the film and making available for the first time reproductions of Snow's original preparatory scripts and notes archived at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto (Canada).