Main Cast: Kim Plate, Greg Hermanovic, John Massey, Joanne Tod, John Penner
Release Year: 2002
Country: CA
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
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. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
This feature-length video by venerable experimental filmmaker Michael Snow gets its title from the area of the brain that passes messages between the right and left hemispheres. Like his other work, it investigates issues of perception and illusion through a rigorous structure enlivened with considerable wit. In this case, Snow explores the concept of metamorphosis through a mind-boggling show of digital effects. Snow often sprinkles his work with humor, but *Corpus Callosum may be the founding member of an entirely new genre of experimental comedies of perception. For most of the video's length, the camera tracks laterally through an anonymous office space that seems to repeat infinitely. Each time the room is seen, some new permutation has taken place; people change desks, or clothes, or suddenly morph into odd shapes, for instance. Interspersed with these shots are other scenes that are also set up as perceptual gags and guessing games (in one, the viewer finds him or herself trying to anticipate which of the many objects fastened to a wall will explode). Linking everything together are a hero and a heroine, who exist only in the most abstract sense of the term because they exchange identities, genders, and ages continuously. *Corpus Callosum creates a visual field that is constantly in flux. It's impossible, on a single viewing, to take in all the visual puns and perceptual jokes, but if one is willing to stay with it, it becomes a feast for the eyes and the mind. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
Cast
Kim Plate
Greg Hermanovic
John Massey
Joanne Tod
John Penner
Tom Sherman
Credit
Rob del Ciancio - Animator, Janet Hadjidimitriou - Casting, Michael Snow - Director, Paul Cormack - Editor, Michael Snow - Production Designer, Harald Bachmann - Cinematographer, Robbi Hinds - Cinematographer, Michael Snow - Producer, Ian Haskin - Sound/Sound Designer, Greg Hermanovic - Special Effects Supervisor, Michael Snow - Screenwriter
