Schlagwort: super 8

Wabisabi In Berlin Part 1!

Yeeha, the first Berlin-workshop is over (the second is in July and full).
7 people, 2 intense days full of filmish vibes, lucky developers, great ideas, infecting mood! It’s every time (this was only my 5th workshop so far) fascinating how people that have never met before can become very quickly like brothers and sisters in a boat! Thank you for being part of the wabisabi event, guys and chicas!!

This is Nadine hanging in a tree, Cécile despiralizing the freshly developed film from the spiral and Florian hanging 15 m of still wet film through the dark room while we were watching some films on the beamer.

Film on!

The Dresden Feeling

Wabisabi #4!

I held my fourth film workshop – at the Schmalfilmtage Dresden, one of the best short film festivals on earth (8 and 16 mm)! All about the power and beauty and techniques and tricks of Double Super 8 and black&white negative processing. The 8-members-gang was cool and enthusiastic, produced meters and meters of (partly double exposed) great film! Go to www.wabisabisuper8.com and find out more … soon …

This is Marie and Karin writing names in the deep frozen snow:

[and thank you thank you thank you dear festival jury for the prize for my film, yippieh!!! May nightlight shine lovely on you ;-]

Oh yes and by the way: I spent 3 nights in my favourite Hotel called Raskolnikoff which I can definitely recommend if you’re ever looking for a lovely spot to stay. In Dresden-Neustadt, not expensive at all, kitchen for free use, only 3 or 4 rooms, beautiful pictures hanging in them.
I felt well protected by the insect man!!


Cambridge Super 8 Wabisabi Workshop 1

I’m in a hurry and in a blurry wonderful experimental mood!
This one turns out to be one of the best warmest film festivals in the world …
…. and here come some first photos of my Wabi-Sabi workshop (yesterday and today) – so intense and so fun and successful (in terms of films that we processed today: 10! Ekta 64T with Tetenal Reversal Kit E6! God! Beee-yooooou-ti-fullll!!!)

Here’s Julie performing the ultimate Russian Tank Spiral Ballet:

This is our group film hanging in Colins workshop space:

This is the Wabi-Sabi group sunken in Cambridge’s Green:

… and this is Jean, holding the magical tank direction heaven 🙂

……. to be continued ……

Processing Happiness

I’ve been processing Super 8 films myself forever … I like it, diving into chemicals, the excitement of opening the developer tank after fix and watering and checking: pictures on it or not?! This evening I processed a black and white TriX using the Foma (Czech) reversal kit. But I processed it negative which means only the first developer and then fix. Yeah! Great! One cassette contains 15 m (50 ft) of film and they are now hanging zigzagwise through my room, drying nicely! Happiness is a warm film!

Workshop Last Day

Mission possible. More Super 8 makers & lovers!
Thanks Tsveta, Hans, Nick, Mathijs, Mariska, Britt, Judith, Matt, you were great!
To be continued …

This is Mathijs dumping an underwater camera and attracting ducks!!!!! Which was by the way a totally hard job because they somehow were afraid of the camera and instinctively felt it … We had to throw a lot of bread pieces (btw nederlandse supermarket bread is incredibly soft and sandwichfriendly but that is another story) and when the seagulls communicated that the area was safe then the ducks came … slooooowly ….
Filming needs patience but it’s always worth it.

This is Mariska and Britt checking a freshly processed color Ekta film!!

Rotterdam Worm Workshop Day 3

Wow, that was an intense day 😉
Filming paperships, swans from underwater, burning tea-saucers, sofa patterns, bridges, workers, seagulls. And it was also a darkroom day, spiraling film into Russian tanks, diving in chemicals, the magic moment when a film sees for the first time the projector light: blurring night lights (the magic B!!), snow traces, backwards walking sign-seekers, living trousers, subway lights, scary lamps … and more.
To be continued!

Rotterdam Workshop Day 1

Yesterday it started to storm really heavily and today it was all fresh and cold and we had an amazing light outside, very melodramatic. Perfect for the first day of Wabi-Sabi-Filming!

My students are cool, the place is great, the weather plays with us, the first black+white processing made the first group film a masterpiece! More to follow. Tomorrow we will have some outdoor experiments, challenge coincidence to take us on a trip through Rotterdam. I’ll be back!!!

East and West Legacy

It’s a win-win situation! Once there was a guy called Manfred, a photographer, who has filmed half of his life with 16 mm and super 8 and then stopped it. Put his stuff away in the attic … and yeeeears later discovered me on the internet. He wanted to get rid of his stuff and he gave it all to me, knowing that it would be received with open arms 😉 – one good NIZO camera and a lot of Kodachrome 40 film cassettes (Kodak stopped processing this type of film last year. It’s impossible to self-process it. There’s only one lab in the world as far as I know that offers processing for a good price, it’s Dwayne’s in Kansas, USA!).
I’m very thankful, it’s a precious gift.

It reminds me of another legacy story: As everybody knows the GDR was over in ’89. ORWO was the Eastern photo and Super 8 brand. I always loved it. Before the wall came down I sometimes went over the border (how easy for me as a Westerner!) and bought ORWO photographic paper and super 8 films. Smuggled it over. No real danger actually, it was not really legal to export it, but some films in the bag if they checked you … was ok, no bad experiences.

There was one lab in (East) Berlin-Adlershof that, after the GDR merged silently into Westgermany, still continued to develop ORWO films for 2 more years. Until 1992. I remember, I often went there with the S-Bahn (interurban train) and brought them my films and got them back some days later. I went there during the closing period and when I went there for the last time they were all packing, throwing old folders on trash heaps, emptying their offices. All in silence, it was so calm and sad, I felt the winds of history, honestly!! I went into a room, sneaking around, met a man in a white working coat who looked really sorrowfull and we had some conversation and in the end he gave me an ORWO book of chemical recipes! I told him that I’m a self-processor and that I’m in love with film making and especially with the ORWO grainy warm-colored quality and I felt he was a tiny little happy when he gave me the book, knowing that it would fall in loving arms 😉

Thanks guys! 

Super 8 Workshop Day 2

Whow!
Today was Animation Day!
(sorry for the out of focus picture above … my cellphone camera got too hot I guess 😉 /// we transformed the filmcenter into an animation center: 2 tables covered with moving things like fruit, lighting ducks, burning candles, bread, words written on paper … my students did a crazy good job animating, bringing objects to life! I’m proud of them.