Presents1980

"The apparent vertical scratch in celluloid that opens PRESENTS literally opens into a film within the film. When its figure awakens into a woman in a 'real' set, the slapstick satire of structural film begins . Snow pushes us into acceptance of present moments of vision, but the single drumbeat that coincides with each edit announces each moment of life's irreversible disappearance." – Philip Monk, Art Express
"PRESENTS is a major work, even when measured by the standards of Snow's most impressive achievements. The title is a complex, provocatively ambiguous pun. The first section is a play based on the slipping and colliding senses of the word 'presents,' its homonyms, synonyms, and related concepts .... In the last section, assisted by the drum beat accenting each cut, the editing insists on the separateness of each shot and by doing so it constructs a vast inventory of different things and events. This extraordinary concluding montage sequence poses the most concerted and comprehensive challenge to the discourse of presen(ts)(ce) mounted by the film." – Stuart Liebman, Millennium Film Journal