knowledge of past events to the image of the present, as if we were entering into a historical drama, turning the image of the film's present (which is identifiable as such) into a representation of the past? It was of course a not uncommon practice in the historical narrative films of the 1960s to embrace visual anachrony wholeheartedly. Without the benefit of historical knowledge, the superimposition in this case can also simply function as a signifier of nostalgia, of the eternal influence of the past on the imagination of the present. Of course we might also assume that 1933 refers to the address of the building in which the loop was shot. Or finally, is the text in this image simply an arbitrary combination of four Arabic numerals, which lead us down the garden path of conjecture? »1933» is among Wieland's most ‹structural› films. While it does not resist easy analysis as energetically as several other examples I'll cite here, it serves to point out Wieland's concern with the representability of the here and now in an unproblematic fashion and more specifically, to point out a strategy common to nearly all films discussed here: the juxtaposition of written language and image. In Wieland's work these two systems compete

for attention, with each calling distinct processes into play. In the gap between the kinds of knowledge, or rather, the kinds of experience each may produce, is the suggestion that the filmic image always makes a visual but not necessarily an easily legible impression. This problematic is taken up explicitly in «Rat Life and Diet in North America,» from 1968, which is her first film to employ the political rhetoric of the day. «Rat Life and Diet in North America» In this 14-minute film, «Rat Life and Diet in North America» (1968), subtitles are superimposed over images of gerbils and cats in domestic settings ranging from a kitchen table to the screen of a window and the garden beyond. Inserted into the documentation of the banal adventure of a band of gerbils loose in the house is the familiar photograph of the dead Ché Guevara surrounded by uniformed men. What is most remarkable about this film is its (shameless) juxtaposition of a political tale with real-life referents, with images that could not be more quotidian, thus coupling a fictional narrative about American military aggression against Canada with the eternally tentative movements of gerbils. «Rat Life and Diet in North America»