Made at the beginning of the eighties, when experimental cinema was mostly interested in the textual aspects of the medium and prioritised a semiotic and structural approach to cinema, So is This is an exercise in the textuality of film. Without sound, Michael Snow records a long succession of white words that appear on a black background. With just one word on the screen (and never more than one), they configure messages around the word ‘this’.

This

is

the

title

of

this

film.

The

rest

of

this

film

will

look

just

like

this

...

With a low-res image, as if from the cinema of the 1920s or thirties, the time for which each word is exposed varies depending on its length: the shortest words (such as ‘is’ or ‘of’) are shown very quickly, while longer words are given more time. Clearly self-referential and without narrative content, the messages invite reflection on the act of looking and the condition of cinema. Snow refers to the non-existent narrative content in the film, and denies its supposed necessity, with messages such as: ‘This, as they say, is the signifier’ or ‘Some of the more cultivated members of the audience may regret the lack of in-depth semiological analysis in this film’. So Is This reduces semiology to pure semiotics.

So Is This overlaps reading and cinematic experience, hindering the ‘normality’ of both. The film places the spectator/reader in the immediate present. With no other element than this one discourse and always located in the here and now, Snow establishes a unique relationship between the viewer and the film, akin to a private language.