Celluloid-based filmmaking is alive and well in Europe, thanks to a network of film labs dedicated to both the preservation of technology and cinematic experimentation! This two-night program on October 27th and 28th features work from three of these cooperatives: L'Abominable in La Courneuve, France; Labor Berlin in Berlin, Germany; and Labo Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium.
While the artists associated with these labs produce work in a variety of styles, the films selected for these two evenings are similar in that they demonstrate extremes of the photographic process. In Mahine Rouhi and Olivier Fouchard's Tahousse, and Emmanuel Lefrant’s Parties visible et invisible d'un ensemble sous tension, filmed landscapes are manipulated in color and texture toward otherworldliness and abstraction respectively. In Els van Riel's Gradual Speed, winner of the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental at the 2014 Anna Arbor Film Festival, the image in each vignette appears through time much like a photograph developing while the hum and crackle of vibrating dust erupts on the optical track.
