‘Wavelength’, directed by Michael Snow in 1967, is an experimental film, 45 minutes long and minimal. The film is one shot: the camera focuses on a room with windows and pictures on the wall opposite – too far away to see clearly. Over the course of the 45 minutes, the camera imperceptibly zooms in on the pictures revealing a photograph of the sea. Whilst it is doing this, characters come and go from the room, music plays occasionally, and the picture, colour and sound warp in strange ways. This film is more suited to an art gallery than a cinema, but the effect it has had on filmmakers drawn by the minimalism, the playfulness that Snow demonstrates, the immersive quality of sharing space with this single shot, makes it an important movie. The film is simple, but incredibly complex in terms of concept and import – the amount of time the shot takes to traverse the room, and the final image of a seascape fading to white, seems almost to be a critique of conventional movies in which time is compressed and plots are unfolded. There is a sense here of boredom leading to unresolution that feels very uncinematic. This doesn’t make it an easy film to watch or like, and this is probably the only time I’ll bother to see it, but the concept when converted into something more conventional like Chantal Akerman’s ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’, can be mesmerising.

Would I recommend it? It’s short and on YouTube so it’s worth a watch, but it’s an endurance. Watch in a double bill with ‘Jeanne Dielman’.