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= Back and Forth (film) = <---> (alternative title: Back and Forth) is a 1969 structural film by Canadian director Michael Snow. Shot in- and outside a classroom at the Madison, New Jersey campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, the camera pans and tilts with varying frequency.

Content
The first section shows a pan across a building’s exterior as a person walks into frame. A cut to a classroom interior shows a pan continuing its movement along a fixed arc, both endpoints of which will be signaled by a percussive sound. For most of this first section, the pan occurs with the same frequency. Figures appear at various points in the field of view described by the pan’s arc (often on-camera at one of the pan’s endpoints, but potentially also at any point in-between, either on- or off-camera). Three-quarters into this section, the pans begin to accelerate, until the image blurs. The second section uses a tilt, which shows the room from floor to ceiling. Over this section’s duration, the tilts gradually decelerate. A title card is shown, giving the shooting location, the names of people who appeared or were nearby, the equipment used, the names of the recording and processing facilities used, and the work’s distributor. The final section superimposes previous pan and tilt sequences (some reversed or shown upside-down) intercut with black and white footage.

Production
The film’s title card reads: “This film was shot at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison N.J. in July 1968. Editing and recording were completed in January 1969 in New York. Appearing in the film are: Allan Kaprxw, Emmett Williams, Max Neuhaus, Terri Marsala, Donna Aughey, Joyce Wieland, Luis Camnitzer, George Murphy, Susan, Ay-O, Dr. Gordon, Liba Bayrak, Annie Scotty, Mary, Mac, students from the H.E.P. Program and others. Nearby were Nancy Graves, Richard Serra, John Giorno, Paul Ide, Alison Knowles, Jud Yalkut and many others—film stock was Ektachrome 7257, camera: Bolex H16 with Kinotar 12.7 lens. Recording was by Darvin Studio and prints by Filmtronics (New York). Available from New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative, 175 Lexington.”

Reception
"This neat, finely tuned, hypersensitive film examines the outside and inside of a banal prefab classroom, stares at an asymmetrical space so undistinguished that it's hard to believe the whole movie is confined to it, and has this neck-jerking camera gimmick that hits a wooden stop arm at each end of its swing. Basically it's a perpetual motion film that ingeniously builds a sculptural effect by insisting on time-motion to the point where the camera's swinging arcs and white wall field assume the hardness, the dimensions of a concrete beam. "In such a hard, drilling work, the wooden clap sounds are a terrific invention, and, as much as any single element, create the sculpture. Seeming to thrust the image outward off the screen, these clap effects are timed like a metronome, sometimes occurring with torrential frequency" https://www.artforum.com/print/197001/wavelength-standard-time-and-one-second-in-montreal-38534.

"Not only did 'Back and Forth' expand the possibilities of cinematic framing as postulated in 'Wavelength'; it actually expanded the parameters of movie narrative as we'd previously recognized them, expanded them even beyond Godard's bold effects in such films as 'Weekend.' For in 'Back and Forth,' Snow was able to completely suffuse form with content, while not relinquishing the traditional elements of characterization and acting. The relentless back and forth pan stresses similar concepts which Snow had engaged in his sculptures and carries still further the experiments with perception and illusion which began in 'Wavelength'" https://www.cfmdc.org/film/102.