Expanded cinema
By Other Means for Other Ends
Workshop with OJOBOCA exploring expanded cinema
15.09.-17.09.23 // 10am - 4pm
In the early days of cinema projecting a film was an act of performance and as much a part of the experience as the images on the screen. Over time the act of projection was relegated to the darkness of the projection booth, but its potential persisted for filmmakers interested in finding other types of cinematic experiences. They moved the projector back into the space and began to play with the possibilities of live manipulation, creating events that expanded and exploded the constraints of the traditional cinema.
In this workshop we will explore analog techniques for exploring the possibilities of the frame, the shutter and the screen. We’ll begin by looking at the projector not as a passive device for the reproduction of coupled images and sounds but as a playable instrument. We will explore ways of transforming the quality of the light through the use of an external shutter.
In the darkroom we will go over techniques for creating images that lend themselves to live performance. Using black and white print stock we’ll apply contact printing techniques to make loops of various lengths. We’ll make photograms by placing diverse materials directly on the filmstock or copy found or original footage.
Then we’ll examine methods for incorporating sound into live performance. We’ll look at how optical sound can be manipulated using external effect gear such as effects pedals and synthesizers. To further interact with the mechanical properties of the machine, we will build contact microphones to manipulate sound through touch.
Finally, the participants, individually or in groups, will use the material created in the workshop to produce and perform a short piece of expanded cinema with single or multiple projectors and live sound.
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low-waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
When: 15., 16. & 17.09.23 // 10am - 4pm
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Strandveien 95, 9006 Tromsø
Please sign up by writing an email to:
polarfilmlab@gmail.com
About OJOBOCA
Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy are filmmakers based in Berlin. They work together under the moniker OJOBOCA. Together they practice Orrorism, a simulated method of inner and outer transformation. They have presented their films and performances in a wide variety of venues and festivals worldwide, among them the Wexner Center for the Arts, Museum of the Moving Image, Österreichische Filmmuseum, Anthology Film Archives, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kunstverein München, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, New York Film Festival, Visions du Réel, RIDM, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Both González Monroy and Dornieden are members of the artist-run film lab LaborBerlin. www.ojoboca.com
DIY/LIT - Do It Yourself, Learn It Together - Colour Developing
24th & 25th June 2023 // 10:00 - 16:00
Introductory workshop to colour processing! The DIY gang at Polar Film Lab will lead a workshop for analogue novices, amateurs, super-pros and all others.
This will offer an introduction to colour processing of 16mm cine-film, the process and the chemistry involved. For those unfamiliar, there will be a brief introduction to the camera, equipment and darkroom and will shoot some film together. However, we will spend most of our time in the darkroom trying out a couple of different colour processes.
This is part of our DIY/LIT introduction series: Polar Film Lab has been running for some time but while we know a variety of different things, we are NON-EXPERTS, and as such these workshops are very much about learning, experimenting, playing and trying to get to grips with the very different tactility of analogue cine-film! We are about DIY, collective learning and feeding into each other’s different types of knowledge. Analogue formats are exciting, offer lots of room for experimentation and for evolution into contemporaneous, cutting edge image making. They also use very old, mechanical equipment which offers lots of room for failure. This is part of the excitement and joy, but also makes it a slow and imprecise process - be aware you may make beautiful films that look nothing like what you hoped! (You may also, on occasion, make films which are entirely black!)
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have, and a (loose) idea of something you would like to film.
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
When: 24th & 25th June 2023, 10:00 - 16:00
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Tromsø
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
Please sign up with writing an email to:
polarfilmlab@gmail.com
Pulsos Subterráneos / Underground Pulses
Elena Pardo, 40 min, 16mm film loops
Live cinema performance
May16th 2023 19:00 at Tromsø Kunstforening
An expanded cinema performance that observes and listens to visible and underground territories, both physical and intangible, in two regions of Mexico that currently experience or resist mining activities: Zacatecas and Oaxaca.
Pulsos Subterráneos / Underground Pulses is a subjective account of communities’ resistance to corporate mining and their defense of territory, life and culture. Calpulálpam, Ixtlán, San José del Progreso, San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla in Oaxaca; Vetagrande, Salverna and Concepción del Oro in Zacatecas: these communities have very different experiences. For example, Calpulálpam has a long tradition of organized struggle that has allowed them to oppose the reopening of a mine that operated for more than 200 years. On the other hand, the community of Vetagrande, where mines have operated since the late 1500s, is now on the brink of collapse due to unprecedented large-scale mining activity.
During years of traveling between Oaxaca and Zacatecas, she weaved a net of bonds and friendships. These, in turn, grew into collaborations that spread and multiplied in a variety of projects. Pulsos Subterráneos / Underground Pulses began filming in 2019. It was born from observation and interest in these two places.
Why do some communities manage to resist the incursion of this and other extractivist industries imposed by the Mexican State? What is at stake? This project seeks to understand the struggle to defend the territory. It does so through the stories its inhabitants tell and the experience its landscapes evoke.
~
Elena Pardo
Visual artist and director of documentary films, experimental cinema, and animated movies. One of her lines of work is exploring the possibilities of photochemical film material— preserving and capturing images, working in a laboratory, and projecting a variety of formats. Since 2005 she has taken part in the expanded cinema collective Trinchera Ensamble.
She is also co-founder and current director of Laboratorio Experimental de Cine [Experimental Film Laboratory] (LEC), an art project that surfaced in 2013. LEC was born in response to the need to enhance a community of filmmakers and audiences interested in experimental cinema. LEC engages in the dissemination, production, educational activities, and programming of content in different film formats. Elena also collaborates in audiovisual training programs in Oaxaca and Mexico City.
The project is a collaboration with Tromsø Kunstforening.
DIY/LIT - Do It Yourself, Learn It Together - Analogue camera, black & white developing and analogue projecting
21st-23rd April, 10:00 - 17:00
Introductory workshop to all things moving-image and analogue! The DIY-ers at Polar Film Lab will lead a workshop for analogue novices, amateurs, and all others over 3 days.
This will include an introduction to analogue 16mm cameras (Bolex and Krasnagorsk) and an introduction to at least some of the things that can go wrong with them. We will collectively film outside while light, before coming inside to develop the black and white negatives using traditional photochemical processes. Finally, we will throw some light through our new film! We will take a look at what we have produced, and learn a little about how a projector (Eiki) works.
This is part of our DIY/LIT introduction series: Polar Film Lab has been running for some time, however - while we know a variety of different things - we are DIY and experimentation-focused, and as such these workshops are very much about learning, experimenting, playing and trying to get to grips with the different tactility of analogue cine-film together! We are about DIY, collective learning and feeding into each other’s different types of knowledge. Analogue formats are exciting, offer lots of room for experimentation and for evolution into contemporary, cutting-edge image-making. They also use very old, mechanical equipment which offers lots of room for failure. This is part of the excitement and joy, but also makes it a slow and imprecise process - be aware you may make beautiful films that look nothing like what you hoped! (You may also, on occasion, make films which are entirely black!)
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have, and a (loose) idea of something you would like to film.
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low-waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
When: 21st-23rd April, 10:00 - 17:00
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Tromsø
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
If you have any questions email: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
Sign up via form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdeYB-XhN3vNGAqoy4Hw0IwQnsFan0NutweE_fVVHUcnRzwPg/viewform?usp=pp_url
Intro to Bipacking and Print Positive!
DIY/LIT introduction series
6, 7 & 9. March 2023
OBS! This is a workshop aimed at intermediate analogue filmmakers, moderately comfortable with the basics of analogue filmmaking.
It is part of our DIY/LIT series focused on experimenting and learning together to develop our shared knowledge base in analogue filmmaking. As such, in this workshop we will be working some things out as we go.
Once you have mastered the processes of shooting and developing your negative film, you may think, what now? This workshop will go through the process of getting your B & W negative print to a projection-ready positive print image.
We will try bipacking a Bolex, and contact printing on a Steenbeck editing table. These are techniques that when advanced can also be used in matting and to create analogue special effects. This workshop will take place both in and out of the dark room and we will be using caffenol processing.
This is part of our DIY/LIT introduction series: Polar Film Lab has been running for some time, however - while we know a variety of different things - we are NON-EXPERTS and as such these workshops are very much about learning, experimenting, playing and trying to get to grips with the different tactility of analogue cine-film! We are about DIY, collective learning and feeding into each other’s different types of knowledge. Analogue formats are exciting, offer lots of room for experimentation and for evolution into contemporaneous, cutting edge image making. They also use very old, mechanical equipment which offers lots of room for failure. This is part of the excitement and joy, but also makes it a slow and imprecise process - be aware you may make beautiful films that look nothing like what you hoped! (You may also, on occasion, make films which are entirely black!)
As part of the workshop we will provide: Print stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, a black & white negative film, any knowledge you may have.
When: 6.7. & 9., 10:00 - 16:00
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Strandveien 95, Tromsø
Please sign up with writing an email to: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
Filmmaking workshop with the Institute for Scene Experiments
17 February 19:30 – 21:00
18 & 19 February 10:00 – 19:00
@ Tromsø Kunstforening
As part of the exhibition Counterimaginaries at Tromsø Kunstforening, the Institute for Scene Experiments stages a three day filmmaking workshop. The workshop investigates properties of cinema; its limits and possibilities for experimentation, its relationship to our everyday life. Participants will analyze, deconstruct, and reconstitute elements of existing scenes for the camera, exploring alternative ways of staging narrative, framing and sound. The workshop aims to reflect on the film crew as a social form and the generative potential of scenes independent of plot, development and conclusivity. This will also be a space for exchanging knowledge about different technical aspects of filmmaking and performance. Selections of raw materials, texts, images and audio will later be shared and made available to participants via an online server.
No previous experience with filmmaking is necessary, anyone over 16 can take part. Performers, writers, technicians, students, artists, designers; anyone with a passionate interest or skills in an aspect of scenes are encouraged to participate.
Lunch and refreshments will be served. Please sign up only if you can commit to the entire workshop. The workshop will be held in English.
Sign up here: https://forms.gle/N3VyWDVJTXP2ZuHh9
The Institute for Scene Experiments is an institution devoted to the investigation, production and dissemination of scenes. Established in 2022, ISE is a situation for the exchange of knowledge around different technical aspects of filmmaking and performance, working through re-enactments, commissioned text, open rehearsals and collective editing.
The workshop is made possible through a collaboration between Polar Film Lab, PRISMS and Tromsø Kunstforening
DIY/LIT - Do It Yourself, Learn It Together - Analogue camera, black & white developing and analogue projecting
11th-13th November 2022, 10:30 - 16:30
Introductory workshop to all things moving-image and analogue! The DIY non-experts at Polar Film Lab will lead a workshop for analogue novices, amateurs, super-pros and all others over 3 days.
This will include an introduction to analogue 16mm cameras (Bolex and Krasnagorsk) and an introduction to at least some of the things that can go wrong with them. We will collectively film outside while light, before coming inside to develop the black and white negatives using traditional photochemical processes. Finally, we will throw some light through our new film! We will take a look at what we have produced, and learn a little about how a projector (Eiki) works.
This is part of our DIY/LIT introduction series: Polar Film Lab has been running for some time, however - while we know a variety of different things - we are NON-EXPERTS and as such these workshops are very much about learning, experimenting, playing and trying to get to grips with the different tactility of analogue cine-film! We are about DIY, collective learning and feeding into each other’s different types of knowledge. Analogue formats are exciting, offer lots of room for experimentation and for evolution into contemporaneous, cutting edge image making. They also use very old, mechanical equipment which offers lots of room for failure. This is part of the excitement and joy, but also makes it a slow and imprecise process - be aware you may make beautiful films that look nothing like what you hoped! (You may also, on occasion, make films which are entirely black!)
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have, and a (loose) idea of something you would like to film.
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
Oblique Strategies
- a 3 day workshop led by Laida Lertxundi and Ren Ebel at Polar Film Lab
In this three day workshop, we will watch films, read texts and shoot 16mm film with an emphasis on producing spontaneity and surprise out of the banal and the ordinary. Each day will focus on one of three themes — Environment, Object and Text — and will include both a discussion of relevant texts and moving image works by various artists and filmmakers, as well as a workshop portion where we will perform collaborative scores and exercises as a group, both with and without 16mm filmmaking equipment, with the intention of making work not based on ideas and concepts, but on playful experimentation with the forms and materials of time-based art.
We will be discussing the texts:
"Oblique Strategies" Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
"Pillow Book" Sei Shōnagon
"Approaches to What?" Georges Perec
"Against Meaning in Ballet" Edwin Denby
and works by:
Yvonne Rainer, Paul and Marelene Kos, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Sherman, Marcel Broodthaers
When: 8. & 9. & 10.Sept. 2022 // 11AM - 4PM (lunch included)
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Tromsø
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
Please sign up by writing an email to:
polarfilmlab@gmail.com
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
Laida Lertxundi is a filmmaker and artist living and working between Los Angeles, California and the Basque Country. Her 16mm films bring together ideas from conceptual art and structural film with a radical, embodied, feminist perspective. Her work has been featured in exhibitions and solo exhibitions at museums including the Whitney Biennial, Museum of American Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MoMa, New York; Tate Modern, London, Matadero, Madrid and ICA, London.
Ren Ebel is a writer and artist from California whose work includes sound, film/video, text and drawing. His criticism, fiction and art has appeared in Artforum, Frieze and Mousse.
archive
Polar Film Lab & Tromsø Kunstforening invite for the PRISMS edition:
The Deviant Product with Anette Gellein & Laida Lertxundi
19:00, 9 September 2022
Tromsø Kunstoforening, Muségata 2, Tromsø
Free entry
In the 1960s, the Norwegian filmmaker Erik Borge argued the need for more “free artistic short films” in Norway, which he defined as “the deviant product – the strange, the difficult, the angry”. The Deviant Product is a series of screenings around Norway investigating the ambiguous space between art and film, and asking what kinds of deviance and dissent we should be looking for in moving images today. Guests are invited to nominate works they consider important, in some way, for renewing a conversation about alternative and experimental film in a Norwegian context.
The Tromsø edition is a collaboration with the Polar Film Lab, a membership collective providing space and community around analogue film in Tromsø. Lab co-founder Sarah Schipschack has nominated two artists to show work in person: Laida Lertxundi, an acclaimed filmmaker living between in Los Angeles and the Basque country, who will also be running a 16mm workshop during the week; and Anette Gellein, an artist from Stavanger who has just arrived in Tromsø for a residency with the Film Lab.
After the screening Anette, Laida and Sarah will be in conversation with PRISMS director Mike Sperlinger.
PROGRAM
Performance by Anette Gellein
I Always Liked The Sedative Effect Of Flowers
A brand-new text-based performance building on Anette’s film-in-progress, based on her research into vocal and pedal effects.
“I have always liked flowers. For no reason whatsoever. They are beautiful, mystical, tactile and nasty if you look close. But the truth is that I don’t know anything about them. Neither do I care enough to study them. Still I love them, superficially, but it’s ok. Like butterflies, I love them too. Some things can be just that, just your own version of itself. I don’t even know where these flowers came from. I woke up from a bad dream and suddenly they were in my hands. This total disconnection is beauty, it’s synthetic. It’s fake.”
Filmscreenings with Laida Lertxundi
Llora Cuando Te Pase // Cry When It Happens
Laida Lertxundi
(2010, United States, 14 mins, 16mm film)
Los Angeles City Hall is reflected onto the window of the Paradise Motel. It serves as an anchor for this traversal through the natural expanse of California. Here, we discover a restrained psychodrama of play, loss, and the transformation of everyday habitats. Music appears across the interiors and exteriors and speaks of limitlessness and longing.
025 Sunset Red
Laida Lertxundi
(2016, USA, 14 mins, 16mm)
025 Sunset Red is a kind of quasi-autobiographical reckoning. An indiscernibility of then and now. Recollection and immediacy. Delicacy and virility. The elusive and the haptic. The Basque Country and California. It’s a set of echoes of an upbringing by communist radicals, not as nostalgia but as a way of making sense, of finding practical applications of the past in the present. Within the film, blood is collected and poured, red filters cover landscapes, and images of desire are both produced and observed. The film is a diaphanous, psychedelic foray into the domestic and the political, looking at ways that politics may erupt, shape a life, form a sensibility, and become inscribed upon a body.
Vivir para Vivir / Live to Live
Laida Lertxundi
(2015, United States, 11 mins, 16mm)
A certain trajectory of being lost is drawn across sparsely populated mountain regions while physical processes from heartbeat to orgasm shape image, sound and color patterns until the horizon is reached. With original sounds and music by Ezra Buchla, Albert Ortega, Laura Steenberge and Tashi Wada.
DIY/LIT - Do It Yourself, Learn It Together - Colour Developing
28th & 29th May 2022 // 09:30 - 15:30
Introductory workshop to colour processing! The DIY non-experts at Polar Film Lab will lead a workshop for analogue novices, amateurs, super-pros and all others.
This will offer an introduction to colour processing of 16mm cine-film, the process and the chemistry involved. For those unfamiliar, there will be a brief introduction to the camera, equipment and darkroom and will shoot some film together. However, we will spend most of our time in the darkroom trying out a couple of different colour processes.
This is part of our DIY/LIT introduction series: Polar Film Lab has been running for some time but while we know a variety of different things, we are NON-EXPERTS, and as such these workshops are very much about learning, experimenting, playing and trying to get to grips with the very different tactility of analogue cine-film! We are about DIY, collective learning and feeding into each other’s different types of knowledge. Analogue formats are exciting, offer lots of room for experimentation and for evolution into contemporaneous, cutting edge image making. They also use very old, mechanical equipment which offers lots of room for failure. This is part of the excitement and joy, but also makes it a slow and imprecise process - be aware you may make beautiful films that look nothing like what you hoped! (You may also, on occasion, make films which are entirely black!)
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have, and a (loose) idea of something you would like to film.
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
When: 28th & 29th May, 09:30 - 15:30
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Tromsø
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
Please sign up with writing an email to: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
Seaweed as film developer
A workshop with Lena Gudd at Polar Film Lab
Polar Film Lab invites you to a one day introduction workshop using seaweed as a developer for 16mm b/w film. Seaweed is a great resource here in the North and Lena has experimented with sustainable methods for developing analogue film on that basis.
Does sustainability, analogue film and seaweed sound like an intriguing combination to you? Well then join our workshop and learn how to develop a film roll in seaweed! We will forage seaweed together, shoot a black & white film, make our own seaweed-based developer and develop our film.
No prior knowledge about analogue film is necessary. This workshop also fits those that have advanced knowledge and want to learn how to prepare a non-chemical developer.
When: Saturday 02.04.2022 from 10-16h
Where: Polar Film Lab, Kysten Tromsø Fylkeskultursenter, Strandvegen 95
What: bring clothes according to the weather, we'll be outside for about an hour
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
Please sign up with writing an email to: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
30th April 2022, 10:30 - 16:00
7th & 8th May 2022, 10:30 - 16:00
Introductory workshop to all things moving-image and analogue! The DIY non-experts at Polar Film Lab will lead a workshop for analogue novices, amateurs, super-pros and all others over 2 weekends.
This will include an introduction to analogue 16mm cameras (Bolex and Krasnagorsk) and an introduction to at least some of the things that can go wrong with them. Everyone will then have a week to film on their own or with a buddy (we advise a buddy as we have limited cameras - also it’s more fun!), before coming back together to develop their black and white negatives using traditional photochemical processes. Finally, we will throw some light through our new film! We will take a look at what we have all produced, and learn a little about how a projector (Eiki) works.
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have, and a (loose) idea of something you would like to film.
When: 30th April, 10:30 - 16:00 / 7th & 8th May, 10:30 - 16:00
Where: Polar Film Lab (Kysten), Tromsø
Please sign up with writing an email to: polarfilmlab@gmail.com