Hapax Legomena

[3] Frampton had made reference to the phenomenon through his earlier short film Lemon, whose title is a hapax legomenon in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.

[4] He originally proposed using Hapax Legomena as the title for a collection of short poems before settling on it for the cycle of films.

Michael Snow reads personal comments by Frampton; however, the images are shifted such that photographs he discusses appear after the corresponding narration.

He cast Barbara DiBenedetto and Frank Albetta from Binghamton University as the couple and had them improvise based on a premise he wrote.

[1] The film's title comes from critical mass, the smallest amount of nuclear fuel needed to sustain a chain reaction.

[9] The film's title refers to a travelling matte, a filmmaking technique where a changing shape is used to merge more than one image.

[14] Frampton created the film by shooting a static image from a distance with a handheld telephoto lens, such that the slight tremor of his body is rendered as the motion of the rectangle.

[23] The first three films in Hapax Legomena—Nostalgia, Poetic Justice, and Critical Mass—were released on home media in 2012 as part of the Criterion Collection's A Hollis Frampton Odyssey.