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

10 Active Ingredients

I of course have at least 10 active ingredients but I didn’t know that „slimming patches“ have it, too!
I’ve never even heard about such a thing ….. it says „Simply apply 1 diet patch each day to a clean, dry, hair free part of your body, forget about it and watch the weight come off.“
So what’s inside? Radioactive uranium that makes you immediately forget about your weight? Skunk essence that makes you puke all day long?
[10 minutes internet research says: „ocean kelp called bladderwrack“]. At least the word makes me less hungry …

Bad Beer

Only one beer can ruin your life!
I mean not alcoholic-wise, we know how to handle that, even 3 glasses of wine or 5 glasses of yummy beer, depends on your own personal circumstances and joy and discipline … but what I really despise is when your local government intervenes and treats you like children … like here in Ontario … going to your favourite health store and buy a nice bottle of organic white wine for your dinner? No way, go to controlled LCBO stores.
Enjoy experimental films together with a nasty glass of white wine at Capitol Cinema in Windsor? Bar closes at 7 pm, haha.
Now I see people with transportable coffee mugs late in the evening in a different way … not coffee kept warm, wine or beer kept cold!!
After filmshow at Phog bar you can have it all, ok, but better DARE NOT cross the imaginary border between bar and public street and have a sip outside the safe universe: some bar guy or lady will surely appear in 1 second and lead you back inside to a better lifestyle!
Imagine that. Italians drink 1 glass of white wine to their lunch. At daylight. Just for the fun. Just for the taste. For the culture and cuisine. Without being wacky alcoholics.
(I just don’t like being controlled to the bone.)

GM Chocolate

Mmmh, this is Hersheys yummiest white chocolate with little black cookies inside … unfortunately it contains a variety of ingrediens that are genetically modified (sugar, corn …)
Did you know? Eighty percent of all soybeans and 70 percent of all cotton now grown in the U.S. are genetically engineered. So is 38 percent of all corn. Corn and soy turn up in processed foods as oils.
Mmmmmh!!

Chicken Momo

Walking along the street in plain sunshine, feeling slightly hungry, being dragged just by coincidence into an inconspicuous little restaurant called Tibet Café, I ordered chicken momo just because I liked the name.
The smiling lady said: wait 15 minutes and so I did.
It smelled good there. They have a large image of the Dalai Lama, also smiling. I watched out the window: we’re open. Slow beautiful streetcar. Someone crossing the street. Sunshimmer. I have time. I exist. This is it. I understand the sense of it all.

Ambassadors Of Coincidence

It’s a game.

We played and documented it today and yesterday.
It goes like this:
A city walk game. Limit: one city, two days.
A group of 2 or 3 people.

We chose a starting point by chance (dice, telephone book) which is a street and a number. We go there, our antennas upright, find something, any item possible, any stranded goods, doodle, debris, paint, house, plant, sign, scene, mark that gives away its secret and inspires us to find the next station. We derive information from it, meaning: next street-name and number. And so on.

We tempt fate and challenge coincidence. We go with the flow, confident that the mighty spirit of coincidence will give us signs and that we, the flexible and witty artists, will be able to interpret them, capture them and find our unique personal path until the game comes to a logic end.

This game is not objective. Our personality, our view and our history colorizes the whole experiment and makes it a singular happening, an irrepeatable film. There can be beauty in banality and we’ll find it.

We film and record sounds and document the trip as a whole, the magic points as individual signs, what we see, what we get, what we think … it can lead us to surprises, to weird stories or boredom. It depends on us. And a little on the weather. Super 8 helps make a jewel out of it!

There will be a website soon.
And a film. Give me some time 🙂