Rainbow Cinema

Recently there was a very rare beautiful evening at the Regenbogenkino / Rainbow Cinema in Berlin-Kreuzberg … a 4 evening special event, films mostly by Gaëlle Rouard, some very experimental 16 mm films. I had a special show of 6 films inside the program. Shown in super 8 original. One accompanied by me @ ukulele. Lalalaaaaatrallalla!!
It was fun and very familiar, like gathering around a bonfire. Rattling super 8 projector. Rare. Thank you Manfred for being there and for the bucket full of Kodachromes!!! Chris and Anne for the spirit and the organisation. And the wine. Regenbogenkino is cult. Survived. Yeah!!!

Dresden Beer Coffee Wine Soup

I had a workshop in Dresden at the 14th Schmalfilm Small Format Film Festival … so nice, so cold, so snowy … we experimented with coffee and Radeberger Beer and red wine that one of the participants brought: his wedding wine! Holy wine did divine things: the processing was awesome and the film came out married and beautiful 😉

watch a best of here >>>> xxxx

Unsere Fritten Sind Handgeschnitten!

… means: our fries are cut by hand! 😉

My neighborhood becomes hipper and lovelier and yummier and more expensive and more international and I like it (except the expensive rent part …) – tonight I felt like a decent Hamburger and tried the Hamburger Heaven in Graefestrasse 93. To go.

To the left: Netto supermarket. To the right: Marques Spanish Restaurant (mmmh!).

Had to wait a long time in the cold (20 mins) because the 2 guys seemed to be really busy, their delivery service starting today, but it was worth it and meanwhile I had a Polish beer (Zywiec, mmmh!) and wrapped myself in red fluffy fleece rugs they have outside on their benches … and what can I say? My Cheeseburger was the best I ever had! I chose Biofleisch (really happy organic meat) – you can decide between regular and medium happy animals and super bio … they also have some veggie stuff! Delicious!

Manouche

Manouche = Zigeuner = Gypsy = one very very good Creperie in my neighborhood in the Grimmstrasse 23 … night salad full of goat flavour and a lovely Rosé … the best, the very best to relax and drink and eat after a long working day and I let my eyes float around to find a Samenstrahl which is a Sonnenstrahl which is a sun beam on the chalk board and I hear American and Spanish and French talking around and I think if I were a young female Spaniard I would energize five devils and six angels and come exactly here!!

Rosemary, Elderberry!

I’m working on my film processing experiences with edible stuff and tea …. this week is yummy rosemary and elderberry (Holunder, Germans!) week!
The results are quite amazing …
The recipe is: boil them, cool down to 22°, add 10g vitamine C, 50g washing soda (for 1/2 liter) and then bathe the film 30 – 40 minutes! Then water, then fix, just like regular black&white negative processing.

Soda Desaster

Oh-ha! The second workshop day was even funnier, joyfuller and more enthusiastic … we used coffee and vitamin c and soda for developing … but oh holy shit #2: again! Transparent film! Blank horror, heavy question marks in our brains.

So it was not the semi-sweet Bulgarian wine …. and very late, too late, we found out that we didn’t work with as supposed pure washing soda but a sort of hybrid baking/washing soda which most probably ruined the film 🙁

But in the end we have at least a very beautifully scratched and partly blackened orange-ish experimental film which looks great projected …

Sopot

Yeeha, I’m in Sopot / Polska … at Artloop Festival, giving a super 8 workshop called „The Wine-Vodka-Coffee-Revolution“: developing black and white film using kitchen ingredients.

Yesterday we were quite unlucky …. probably the Bulgarian red wine was too strong or we moved the film a little too much and too long in its bucket – it came out overdeveloped meaning transparent 🙁

Today we’ll try our luck using coffee, vitamin C and soda.

Sunny summer at the Baltic Sea!!

Gofry w zelu! It’s a gigantic waffle with blueberry jam and cream!

Your Girlfriend My Girlfriend

Waiting at Berlin Central Station for my country train I was fascinated by that teenie boy with a grumpy and dull expression on his face … his T-shirt expressing that everybody has a regular straight girlfriend except for him having one that looks like a photoshopped Bond-Girl every teenie boy dreams of, I giggled around and tried to take a photo without being spotted and beaten up, which was not easy because Mama and Papa, even grumpier, instinctively protected him and his shirt, which made me think about teenie boys in general and the uglier the more you need a trophy and does grumpiness come in genes and then my train came and I had waaaaay more horizon around me and immediately forgot about … err … what?

Thank you Gesine and Reiner for that relaxed beautiful late summer weekend we spent together in your little paradise!
(I found Darth Vader in birch leaves shadows on an umbrella … spooooky! 😉

Coffee, Coke, Wine, Berries, Vodka, Tea …

I’m possessed. By the idea of developing black&white films in an environment-friendly way. In a yummy way: using ingredients that you can find in your kitchen. Or at your local supermarket, for little money. Ingredients like instant coffee, red wine, tea, soda, vitamin c powder, vodka, lemons …

Here’s a three minute film that I developed in 5 different soups – the original negative version (later I digitized and reversed it to positive, it’s not yet online, come back later!!!)

The Schlauchfilm Experiment

During one of my Wabi-Sabi Workshops some tima ago Nadine, Florian, Miriam, Andreas and me had a gigantic idea: developing a 15 m long super 8 film in a 15 m long garden hose!

So last weekend we did it!

Found the perfect space: Nadine’s backyard, bought the perfect hose: black inside so that the film won’t be exposed to light … mixed a bucketful of developer and one with fix.It wasn’t easy to thread in the film … but finally we made it and then using a funnel poured the stuff in (and a large quantity aside 😉 … and the result? A perfectly developed black&white negative film!

Photos: Khani & Dagie

The Coca Cola Film Revolution

I’m exploring alternative environmentally friendly black&white film developing methods.
Besides coffee and red wine there’s another sweet bubbly solution: Coca Cola!
Mix 500 ml Coke, grind 5 aspirins, add 8 g vitamin c powder and 40 g washing soda, stir it well, develop your film for about 60 minutes at about 22° – it works!!!

The Sound We See

My friends from Los Angeles are here in Berlin!
Come to their film & music show this coming Thursday!!!

Paolo Davanzo and Lisa Marr – The Sound We See: City Symphonies in the 21st Century
Thursday, 21 June 2012, 21:00 Uhr @ Z-Bar – Bergstraße 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte

In the fall of 2010, 37 youth from across Los Angeles, ages 11 – 19, bonded together to document the life, rhythm and movement of the city from their unique perspectives, joining their visions to create a complete Los Angeles-24-hour City Symphony. The filmmakers divided the day into its two-dozen hours, working in pairs to select and shoot locations that best represented each hour of the day (and night) as one minute on film. The result is a spectacular 24-minute trip through the City of Angels as most have never seen it before…
Learning, emulating and redefining the ways and techniques of past avant-garde urban documentarians, the youth filmmakers worked with 16mm cameras and black and white film.

Paolo Davanzo and Lisa Marr were invited to return to Rotterdam in 2012 to repeat the project with local youth. The Sound We See: Rotterdam was created by a group of 17 filmmakers between the ages of 13 and 42. Once again, local musicians created a soundtrack specifically for the film, which premiered on May 25, 2012 in Rotterdam.

www.echoparkfilmcenter.org