Report from an unusual film workshop
30/01/2023
In the artistic research course The Impact of Research, nine different students learn how to conduct research over two semesters. In January, as part of the course, they participated in a film workshop with cameras from the 1950s and 60s, where they even got to develop their own films in coffee!
The essence of film is optical, chemical and mechanical. It is a world that is sensual, tactile, beautiful and analogue. It's where it all began in an art form born at the end of the 19th century. That's why The Impact of Research, the artistic research course run by SKH, has run a workshop in analogue film photography.
The students filmed with 1950s and 1960s Bolex cameras, mixed their own developing fluids with instant coffee, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and household soda, and finally developed the 16mm rolls in buckets. As musicians play baroque music on period instruments with strings of sinew and escalating tempos, participants got to try their hand at filmmaking in an older yet experimental art tradition.
The camera is powered by a spring mechanism and winds up like a clock, a 30-second shot is a wind-up. The light is measured, the focus is set with a tape measure. Artist and filmmaker Maria Magnusson guided the students in this process-oriented filmmaking that prefers spontaneity to script, and where the slowness created space for reflection and conversation.
Everything ended with a screening in Filmform's premises on Kungsholmen. Thanks to Filmform and Maria Magnusson. What a day! /Nils Claesson, course coordinator
