unterwegs in Sachen Film >>> <<< on the road making films!
Summer is definitely over now …. I discover beautiful deserted places … you can swim for free everywhere: the water is clean! Next year come again! And then have a nice outdoor gym in the park (Tantengymnastik?).
My favourite bridge, connecting Gamla Stan with Södermalm:
The Holy Triangle:
Kardamom, Vanilla and Cinnamon bun! Buy three, get happy!
On a trip to Avantfilm in Karlstad, Sweden, where I’m luckily invited to show some films of mine and to give a little performance on film developing with coffee, plants and Aqvavit, I play holiday in Stockholm 3 days before. Landed safely in Arlanda (what a beautiful name!), getting wet under heavy rain, admiring amazing cloud formations, sleeping on a boat … some impressions! More tomorrow!
This post is dedicated to Peaceman / Friedemann and his film experiment blog called Filmkorn!
He bought a heavy load of very expired (1971!!!) old colour double super 8 film rolls and gave me some to play and experiment with.
This film is rare, has about 6 ISO and was used as a copy film.
He did several tests with E6 and some replacements of the not too well working first developer, used Dokumol and Diafine and got very very different results!
He inspired me to continue his tests using eco friendly first developer!
And what came out is just fantastic.
E6′ first developer is weak and boring, Caffenol is best, Rodinal is lovely, black tea, if too strong, distroys the colour layers beautifully and Vodka makes you think you are hallucinating!!!!!
(from left to right: E6, tea, Rodinal, Caffenol)
(The vodka film stripe comes later, not yet scanned)
Hey wasps, come here, gather around my marmelade! Strawberry! Yummy! Celebrate these last days of summer with me!
One hot summer day at Müggelsee. Berlin – Friedrichshagen – Tram 61 to „Licht- und Luftbad Müggelsee“ – Licht und Luft – Light and Air! Ducks come close, water is medium cool – I love it. A tiny little feeling of very late summer appeared and made me feel just a little … blue. Lake blue. Sky blue.
All my developing recipes (for black & white negative processing) are online now! Nicely knit in a wordpress site!
Have a look! Yumyumsoups!
… belongs to Patti!
Wow, that was one of the best concerts ever in my life, I’m still sweaty smelly and glowing, Patti Smith @ Tempodrom in Berlin, the Horses Concert. She’s so cool, I wanna be like her when I’m old, oops, I’m close before, she’s not that much older, wearing her rock’n’roll gray hair like a timeless angel, smiling about 15 times towards us, the loving audience. Power galore and all these horses songs that catapult me back when I was still at school and sweaty and smelly and in love with the wrong guy and dancing my barefoot feet away in Halle / Westfalen.
Sorry for the bad iPhone picture (3gs), Patti beams that much! I love her for her music, her power, her beauty, her lyrics, her yelling out messages. Multiplying earth and life love, I hope.
I shot some colour film cassettes for my 2015 „Ode To June“ film and developed them myself. Colour reversal in E6. Something must have happened with the last cassettes, the chemicals became weird? Was it too tropical outside? Did I shake the film too little while it was bathing in its colour developer?
Anyway … I got something that you can never get if you want to have it like that on purpose … the film solarised. The result is 2 minutes of the most beautiful bizarre dreamy images I ever shot!
There is a new venue in Berlin. In Berlin-Wedding. A former crematorium. Sounds spooky but is not at all. Silent Green. The official opening will be in autumn this year, but the unofficial has just taken place: music and films and wine and dance and a beautiful summer night! Good souls lingering! Me showing films (here you see a super 8 projection of „Butterfly kisses“. And a wonderful slide installation all around!
Photo © Tom Grenz
Fuji color sheet film from the back. Coffee can pinhole photo.
This was an old colour film … I crammed it into my curry pinhole camera, set it on Michis windowsill .. et voilà: a weird photo of Berlin’s back yard through summer flowers!!
How I love what I do! People google how to develop long dead film formats, colour and black&white, that no film lab would develop any more because film gelatine parts might peel off …. well, they find me. I do it!
Recently I had an Agfa CNS 110-20 – small format colour negative film which I developed carefully and got at least some pale images with some beautiful mistakes … perhaps condensed fluid that had settled on the film layer over the years … the decades??
Anyway … I save images and I love it.
Film and photo makers meet on the Tempelhof Field!
This is for you, Paolo & Lisa, 2 of my alltime favourite friends!
In Berlin for one month, giving an awesome workshop, making a film (together with 20 people, kids, twens, oldies) on super 8: The Sound We See: Berlin!
More soon here, sorry I forgot to blog earlier – so involved!!
I’ll be back soon!!
This was a legendary night! I know they would recognize each other! My two brothers: my real one that I love so much forever and my brother in Super 8 Film, Paolo from LA that I love as well for film spirit and big heart! They met! Tonight! In person! At Pizza! At wine! The world held its breath for a glimpse and then kept on shaking as usually. Good feeling!
There are days like this. Magic in a way. Let me try to explain. The sky opens and the sun sweeps all winter lints away. Suddenly you see clear: dirt, poisonous souls, capitalist patterns, squeaky brakes … and all I can say is that I want to play another game. I mean no game. I rely on my network. Close doors, open windows. Stay tuned!
Another 9 hour working day and I rode my bike to the Sparkasse at Kottbusser Tor to get me some pizza money and then when I left there was a gentle man who opened the door for me and I gave him some cents and then there was a bunch of young bearded men turning up looking ambitious and hipsterish-soft carrying coffee Thermoskannen and cups with them asking the homeless (I guess) person if he wanted a fresh coffee and he nodded and I nodded too because at that very moment I perfectly knew what it’s all about.
Isn’t it funny, I thought, how your life looks like an old Agfa photography if you use the right filter on your Lumix, but it wasn’t just a filter, actually I had none, it was just a long exposure (about 10 seconds) – it was a spirit that set me and Judith in the right light of kitchen – pre-spring – wine lust – friendship mood/mode!
Bunnies lay their eggs! Chicken too! Supermarkets are full of them! Say hello to spring! It’s coming!
Winter, cold, grey light, crazy films – it’s Dresdner Schmalfilmtage again!
My favourite place is the bar, this year enlightened with cineastic lumière light letters! My second favourite place is of course the cinema … and my favourite film this year is Hungry Bones, a film about calcium pills, stars, universe, self consuming body desease – told in a very beautiful way using pixelation, time-lapse, self-animation and drawings. Inspiring!
Somehow I like the new BVG (public transport in Berlin) ads!
