unterwegs in Sachen Film >>> <<< on the road making films!
I am diving in hundreds of old negatives … finding some gems here and there … these are my young film friends at the Open Air Film Festival Weiterstadt. Legendary. Those days when everybody was smoking all the time and we drank beer like water. And I was sneaking around all the time with my Canon AE1 Program. Love it!
My new film!
“Here I am again! On the hunt for the 6 right Lotto numbers!
Oh please, good numbers, come to me!!
Again … nothing won.
Ah who cares … at least it’s gonna be a party for the rabbits, the deer, the racoons, the eggbears and the foxes.”
… exposure time for this pinhole photo here! I am fascinated! I’m going to portrait all my rooms. I love my apartment, I love all my rooms, I live alone and I love it. Viva Kreuzberg!!!
“Ode an Juni” is a kind of infinite life work shot on Super 8.
In 2008, I started to capture June, my ultimately favorite month, in picture and sound.
Diary film, Berlin portrait, life excerpt, colorful poem, something like that now every year.
Number 7 from this year’s June is almost ready!!!!!
I am just about to edit the credits!
Update: Here it is!!!
Seeing my parents and saying hello to the sea! And taking some pinhole photos, too.
24 hours of exposure! This is a pinhole photo of my working space I took with my Illy coffee camera. One whole day! yay!!
I was invited to give a workshop in Warsaw at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art last weekend. Pure pleasure! Great group of 7 people, one day intense super 8 … filming and developing in good old coffee and nice new chrysanthemum juice! Chrysanthemum! Flower of the dead, used only for funerals or on graves (at least in some European countries), flower of the dead month November … we transformed it into something living, pulsating fresh analog film.
Sorry, it took me a while … I’m back in Berlin now, suddenly winter, scanning my 100 pinhole negatives, editing my films, enjoying life somewhere else with less colours and light but still beautiful …
Here’s one of my favourites:
I don’t know why, but I love this crossing, junction, x, streetchaos …. Alvarado Street / Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park in Los Angeles. The Echo Park Film Center is there … a magic spot, a home spot … please be there a little bit longer!
Oops! Suddenly I am on another planet. Car dominated too, but louder. Different colours, many colours, warmer wind, more palm trees. Gentrification buzzing in real time. A Russian truck with yummy Russian Food: Pelmeny! Beer breweries everywhere. One millimeter, sorry: inch! away: many many homeless tents. A little Kreuzberg feeling coming up. No, much tougher, I guess. Do I like it here? Yes!
Strolling through the streets … this is my favourite front garden.
… in our exhibition / artist in residency at North Street Collective, Willits, California.
I love this photo, it’s so full of wild energy! The cool boots she‘s wearing …
Next week I’ll be in Oakland … look what I found strolling around on Google Maps! A space time shift! A green girl with 3 flipflop feet!
I read so many news today and they really make me feel sick but what is feeling sick when others die, one after the other in an ocean of coldness and without a horizon in sight and get killed by very empty and ill young losers – what can I do? What does it mean if I smell the fart of toxic masculinity which is so harmful not only for women and the whole society but also for men themselves.
So I post a lovely bagel topped with smoke salmon cream cheese and salsa (medium hot), and my shabby golden shoes which have seen better days but I love to keep on walking in them.
… means „the crazy world explainer“ … explainerina … explainerette …
It is my youtube channel! Follow me! I tell you all my secrets about analog film developing in eco drinks and more! Here: www.youtube.com/channel/UC2HCES7eg5hBfijVmWNaw4w … I need some more subscribers: from 100 I can put the name of my choice in the url!
Wow, I think I love this one! Taped my little can camera on a tripod, guessed the angle and exposed the negative inside 30 seconds long. Developed it in Caffenol and this is the result! I love it!
I don’t know why but for some reason I am fascinated by these electro poles or posts or however they are called … maybe for me as a European they look so retro?
Anyway, of course I must portray them. Set up my tripod and my Illy pinhole camera, hole pointing pole upwards, never really knowing what comes out, perspective for sure unordinary, risk of sunlight beams falling into the camera, they would darken the negative but who cares, I’m the devotee of adventures and accidents!
Right on the bottom: first of three, positive paper from a negative, both developed in coffee.
I like you nevertheless.
Recently I developed an old Kodachrome in a special soup … see & scroll a few days down … here you can see stills from the film, original orange and inverted to a blue positive!!
How can I present my photos?
I made positives from the pinhole negatives using 40 years old ORWO (made in the GDR) paper which is still amazingly awake and alive and gives me crisp results! I develop them in coffee / turmeric / bark tea / kelp-coffee …. and some more.
I thought about wood pieces. Noel (one of the two founders of North Street Collective) said: „Oh! I have lots! You can have them!“, came over with his gigantic chainsaw and sawed me some little pieces.
Pictures of tree, developed in tree, mounted on tree. I love it!
I love it! People think, me as a puristic super 8 filmmaker would hate these fake apps but on the contrary, I love my 8mm app and my TinType app!
(“A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion”, says Wiki)
(“This incredible filtering tool will have you looking old-timey in no time”, says the app)
I put my favourite pinhole camera on the beach and let it take dramatic pictures!! 🙂
In the can: a piece of black & white negative sheet film. Put it on a piece of photo paper – FOMAbrom baryta – so I receive a positive image! Develop it in Caffenol … which seems to give it an extra dramatic tone! Brown-greyish. I love it!
Kelp is seaweed. I collected some, brewed a tea, added some coffee and vitamin c and washing soda and developed an old Kodachrome in it. Yummy smell, strong developer, the film became orange! I will reverse it digitally and the colour will turn to oceanblue!!
I’m in love with the bus line 65 that takes me from Willits to Fort Bragg. 32 miles. A curvy street through the forest. A trip a little more than 1 hour. A 16 seater van.
Today, a hot day, a crisp blue bright day. Pure beauty for a long moment, I forget everything, all the shit and crap and assholes that are about to kill our wonderful earth and for a moment it all swooooshes in the unimportant background, there is only the bus and us 3 women on bord and rock’n’roll in the bus radio and countless glimpses of beauty looking through the window. Even Bob Dylan does not ruin my mood. Mama’s in the factory, she ain’t got no shoes – Daddy’s in the alley, he’s lookin‘ for food – I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.
Cowboy sage (Artemisia californica) smells strong and makes a good, powerful developer!
„It is endemic to the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, in coastal sage scrub, coastal strand, chaparral, and dry foothill communities“ says Wikipedia!
„In the past it was employed as a treatment to fight coughs and colds by the Cahuilla natives. They chewed the leaves, either dried or fresh. It was used by women of the Cahuilla and Tongva to alleviate menstrual cramps and to ease labor.“ I love it!
The ocean. The beauty. Calms me. Seagulls look at me. I look back and smile.
