In an informal setting, several short films from Francien’s extensive oeuvre, which have been screened at national and international festivals, will be shown.

She also shows images from the film she is currently working on: “Walkabout.”

Her film installation “The Alchemist’s Almanac to the Afterlife” can be seen at De Ruit until Sunday, February 8. The installation can be viewed from the street from morning until late at night. The address is Gedempte Zalmhaven 761, Rotterdam (Leuvehaven metro stop, near the Erasmus Bridge).

Francien van Everdingen (1969; Eethen) studied sculpture in Groningen and Tilburg, followed by cinematography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Film became her medium. She calls herself a “film-maker”: compact films, often ultra-short.

Thomas is a long-time friend of the S8RL. He is a passionate artist who creates surprising images on super8 film every time. Put 10 scenes in a row and you can easily pick out Bogaert’s work. This Belgian artist has a very specific style of his own. Creating moving paintings or paintings moving.

More information about Thomas work.

Their initiative ‘the film can’ produced many short 16mm films that are still very good to watch after almost 20 years. This is because restrictions had been imposed. Each invited artist was given a 16mm film can of 120 metres which has a shooting time of 10 minutes. The production tools were in place and there was a small budget, that was what had to be done with. In short, only people with good ideas and plans could make this a success.

Now a small selection will be screened at EYE on 28 November 2023 at 7.15pm. Filmstad Foundation has screened many film can films at the Paard venue in The Hague, where I was also a film projectioniast at the time. Order your tickets from EYE here.

Back to the Future #3 is a 3-day festival that is all about analogue moving images and optical sound; a celebration of the ‘real’ film medium with an international programme of audio-visual performances, films, lectures, installations and radio programmes.

This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 16mm (celluloid) film format. In 1923 Eastman Kodak launched the 16mm as a cheaper alternative to the industrial 35mm format, and, in the following decades, it was taken up as the film format of choice for experimental artistic film.

Back to the Future is initiated by the members of Filmwerkplaats and is supported by WORM and SPECTRAL and co-funded by the European Union

Experimental 16 mm cinema by Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie

Wednesday 27 September at Stichting Ruimtevaart, Helena van Doeverenplantsoen 3, 2512ZB in Den Haag, Netherlands
Cinema open 8 pm, starting at 8:30 pm
Admission € 10,00, cash only, also at the bar, read here all details

A programme of short films by Australian experimental Filmmakers Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie that take us from windswept coasts to pulsating mega cities. The work revels in the energy of place as expressed through rhythmic movements of light and shadow and the wash of time as dissected into frames in the camera and reconstituted into flickering flow by the projector.
 
In and Out a Window  16mm, 2021, 12 mins
Our front window, from inside and out. Made during a long covid lockdown. A product of the distraction and abstraction that resulted from a lot of staring at the same pieces of glass. View clip.
 
Intersection 16mm, 2022, 10 mins
A staccato study of street level action and inter-action. People and vehicles on everyday journeys are atomised into coursing fragments of light, shadow, angle and inertia, reiterating and disassembling the creation of motion out of still frames at the heart of cinema. Filmed in ten cities on four continents. View clip.
 
Like a Lighthouse  2023, 12 mins
A blinding beam of light. The piercing sound of ships. Everything – the land, plants, the sky – shouts for attention. Perceptions assail us with their demands to be noticed. This film is kind of a home movie of a 5 day hike to the southern most tip of Australia.
 
Bus, Turning  2022, 7 mins
Barcelona, immediately after the independence referendum. Shot on black and white film stock using a re-invented colour separation technique. Dedicated to the spirit of independence everywhere!
 
Valpi  2019, 9 mins
A city of brick, tin and board, rent by internal tectonics and sliding into the sea.

Self Portrait with Bag  2020, 6 mins
A camera-less portrait of the artist. Super 8 cartridges placed inside a black cotton bag, the film advanced via a hand crank. The tiny gaps in the fabric weave make for dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of tiny pinholes. View clip.
 
China not China  2018, 14 mins
Hong Kong marked 20 years since its hand over; just under half way through the planned 50 year ‘one country, two systems’ transition. Taiwan, once imperial China, once Formosa, now ROC on the edge of the PRC. Multiple exposures of street scenes distort space and place creating a fluid sense of impermanence and transition, of two states somewhere between China and not China. View clip.

See some clips on the Vimeo page.

Here you can read a very good article in The Guardian.

While this may sound like a fairytale, their dream comes hand in hand with challenges. They are faced with different sides of reality that, once uncovered, shed a new light onto how living a dream can also look like.

This film will be realized with a crowdfunding action on voordekunst.nl.

The original super8 film materiaal is developed by S8RL.

If you’re wondering why the colours are so “crazy,” it’s because the band chose not to digitally adjust them, but to leave them as they were when the original film came out of the chemical bath.

The band Hallo Venray is from Den Haag and one-of-a-kind, with its own sound and a refreshing no-nonsense attitude. Excellent.

Almost a year ago, we wrote on the Filmlabs.org list that we were losing our current space and looking for solution. Thank you to all of you who responded to the call for support that we launched at that point, it was quite an asset and it still is to have such a backing.

We are now about to close the lab and prepare to get out, BUT we have a plan , and a crazy one indeed! (it’s always the craziest plan that works…)

The city of Epinay-sur-Seine, a few kilometers away from La Courneuve, recently bought the premises of Eclair laboratories, France’s biggest commercial lab that went down in 2014. They want to make a cultural space out of this factory that sits in the center of their town.

We got in touch with the City of Epinay and identified a zone in that factory-size lab that would be perfect for creating the Navire Argo our dreams, combination of our artist-run film lab and and a public cinema dedicated to photochemical film projection. It is centered around the spaces where Eclair used to process the camera negatives, and contains a screening room.

These spaces need to be renovated : there is no functional heating, almost no insulation, etc. We offered that we find the money to carry out that refurbishing and convert them to our needs, and that in exchange of this investment they grant these spaces to our project on the long-run, free of charge. The City has agreed on such a plan.

We have been working with an architect to figure out the cost of this refurbishing. Even though we would keep a lot of the structure since what we would do there resembles very much what was happening in the past (only on a much smaller scale!), we are talking about 2.4M€ to make this renovation of approx. 1200 sq. m of used space.

We are currently looking for funding that could cover these costs. We feel confident that we can call on several public investment grants that we identified and we are already in the process of securing the contribution of State and Regional funds for 2022. But all these grants will not suffice, we need to finance part of the renovation project from other sources than public money. We would need to find about 20% of the budget, around 500 000 euros of private funding to make things possible.

So this is were we are… Looking for these vast sums of money. We hope that we can make it, and are trying to combine foundation money, private donors, crowdfunding etc. for the private funding part. A page on our updated website is all about this. I you can afford to contribute, well, very little bit counts an it will be appreciated, and if you can relay the information in your network or to people that could be donors for such a project, thank you very much !

Hopefully this will work and we can survive and evolve into this new form. With such a space, we would be able to setup a really complete set of filmmaking tools in the hands of filmmakers and secure what we have been doing for the last 25 years into the future. And one day, for sure, greet you all for an artist-run film labs meeting of some size!

All the best, I hope everybody is well in the midst of this terribly dark period.
Nicolas / L’Abominable Paris France

https://navireargo.org/en/home/
https://navireargo.org/en/at-the-former-eclair-laboratory/

Salut à tout’s

Il y a un an nous écrivions sur cette liste que nous étions sur le point de perdre notre espace et que nous cherchions une solution. Merci à toutes et tous qui ont répondu à l’appel à soutien que nous avions lancé à l’époque, ça a été et cela reste un atout de taille d’avoir cet appui.

Nous sommes maintenant sur le point de fermer le labo et de se préparer au déménagement, MAIS nous avons un plan, et il est un peu dingo ! (c’est toujours le plan le plus fou qui marche…)

La ville d’Epinay-sur-Seine, a quelques km de La Courneuve, a acheté récemment le site des laboratoires Eclair, le plus grand laboratoire commercial de ce pays, qui a fermé en 2014. Ils veulent faire un lieu culturel de cette usine qui se trouve au milieu du centre-ville.

Nous avons contacté la municipalité et identifié une portion des bâtiments qui est parfaitement adaptée à la création du Navire Argo que nous avions imaginé, c’est-à-dire la combinaison de notre laboratoire et d’une salle de projection dédiée à l’argentique. Ce sont les espaces où étaient développés les négatifs, qui contient une salle de projection.

Ces espaces demandent à être rénovés : il n’y a pas de chauffage, quasi aucune isolation etc. Nous avons proposé de trouver l’argent pour cette rénovation, et qu’en échange de cette investissement, la ville nous cède l’usage de ces locaux sur le long terme. La ville a accepté cette proposition.

Nous avons donc travaillé avec un architecte pour chiffrer le chantier. Bien que nous gardions l’essentiel de la structure, vu que nous allons y faire des choses qui ressemblent à ce qui s’y faisait (à beaucoup plus petite échelle !), on parle de 2,4 M€ pour rénover ces 1200 m2 environ de bâti.

Nous sommes donc à la recherche du financement ! Nous sommes confiants pour être capables de mobiliser des subventions publiques, en particulier des dispositifs pour l’investissement culturels existant à la Région et au Département. Mais l’apport de tous ces partenaires publics ne pourront suffire, nous allons avoir besoin de faire appel à un part d’argent privé, environ 20% soit tout de même 500 000 euros pour rendre les choses possibles.

Donc nous sommes là-dedans… A la recherche de ces quantités d’argent faramineuses. Nous espérons réussir, et pour la partie fonds privés, nous essayons de combiner fondations, mécénat de particulier ou d’entreprises, dons privés, etc. Il y a une page spéciale du site pour ça. Nous nous sommes organisés pour que les dons soient défiscalisables, et que donc ça ne coûte que 34% de la somme donnée à quelqu’un qui paye des impôts en France. Si vous avez la possibilité de contribuer, chaque don, quelque soit le montant, sera apprécié, et si vous pouvez relayer l’information dans votre réseau ou auprès de personnes qui pourraient être des donateurs, merci beaucoup !

Nous croisons les doigts pour que tout cela fonctionne comme prévu, et que nous puissions y arriver. Dans un tel espace, nous pourrons installer un jeu extrêmement complet d’outils de laboratoire à la disposition des cinéastes, et rendre pérenne ce qui nous avons construit depuis 25 ans. Et un jour, c’est sûr, nous vous inviterons pour une rencontre des labos géante !

Bien à vous tous au milieu de cette période particulièrement terrible.
Nicolas / L’Abominable Paris France