Apr 4, 2025 at 10:00 am – Apr 6, 2025 at 5:00 pm
Approaching Celluloid:
Film as Physical Object
In partnership with NEGATIVELAND
Over the course of this three day workshop participants will be diving into the expansive and transporting world of analog filmmaking with three of the city’s preeminent small gauge filmmakers Josh Lewis, Ross Meckfessel & Jodie Mack.
Key questions to explore together will be simply, why work with physical film? What does analog filmmaking offer that differentiates it from digital practices? How can we think beyond the limitations of film as a figurative medium and what potentials does analog filmmaking provide to reach beyond the boundaries of the form?
This workshop will offer some openings to thinking about the direct treatment of the physical film object itself and creating a physical ‘score’ as a method of editing and assembly. The workshop includes a full day of practical pedagogy at Negativeland’s Workroom, focused specifically on direct filmmaking with 16mm & super-8 film, including splicing, hand-processing, printing and projecting. Participants will get some hands-on experience and get the opportunity to develop their own work with the guidance of seasoned technicians and artists.
Additionally, we’ll be engaging in focused sessions from filmmakers Josh Lewis, Ross Meckfessel and Jodie Mack to talk about their own practices and work, shining a light on some of the multiple histories and theories of analog film. Each filmmaker will discuss their own unique approach to small gauge film as primary material, probing its creative possibilities and properties, variously investigating its potential for physical, spiritual and intellectual transformation. In these sessions we’ll consider cameraless and direct filmmaking, and different strategies for animation and film scoring.
We’re delighted to bring this weekend together in partnership with an essential force in the international analog film network, NEGATIVELAND, a film laboratory dedicated to continuing the creative use of photochemical motion-pictures and our beloved neighbors in Ridgewood. While Negativeland specializes in processing and scanning 8mm and 16mm, their facility also maintains and provides access to many of the tools needed for traditional analog filmmaking workflows. Their ongoing presence in the NY film landscape is a beacon for so many filmmakers working with small gauge film, and we’re thrilled that they’re opening their doors and sharing their expertise with workshop participants.
Details
Open to everyone, though the workshop setting is best suited for filmmakers, film producers, journalists, curators and media artists.
Give us an idea of who you are and why you are coming. When you register you will be asked for a short statement of interest that should briefly describe your experience and a film project (it would be great if you have a project in progress that you would present to the group during the work-in-progress critique sessions), plus a bio. There’s a spot for a link to a work sample (and CV, which would also be nice, but is not required).
$395 early bird registration ends on Mar 28, 2025.
$425 regular registration.
The deposit is non-refundable. Should you need to cancel, you’ll receive half of your registration fee back until Mar 28. After Mar 28, the fee is non-refundable.
In order to keep costs down, this workshop is a BYOL, i.e. bring your own laptop. Students must be fully proficient using and operating their computers.
To register for a workshop, students must pay in full via card, check, or cash . After the early bird registration deadline of Mar 28, course fees are not refundable or transferable and any withdrawals or deadlines will result in the full cost of the class being forfeit. There will be no exceptions. To withdraw from a course please email info-at-uniondocs.org.
In the event that a workshop does not receive sufficient enrollment, it may be canceled. Students will be notified at least 48 hours prior to the start of a cancelled workshop and will be refunded within 5 business days. If we reschedule a workshop to another date, students are also entitled to a full refund. UnionDocs reserves the right to change instructors without prior notification, and to change class location and meeting times by up to an hour with 48 hours prior notice.
Please note: Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Schedule
Thursday, Apr 3 at UnionDocs
Friday, Apr 4 at UnionDocs
10:00am – 10:30am: Welcome & intros
10:30am – 12:30pm: Intro session with Josh Lewis: What is film? Screening, Looking at Films
on Rewinds, Exercise with 16mm loops.
12:30am – 2:00pm: Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm: Session with Ross Meckfessel, Discussion of the Scoring a Film on
Paper, Prep for practical workshop
4:00pm – 4:30pm: Wrap Up Discussion with additional exercises / discussion
Saturday, Apr 5 at Negativeland
10:00am – 10:30am: Tour of Negativeland, intro to lab space
10:30am – 12:30pm: Generating strips of material and editing according to the Score
12:30am – 2:00pm: Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm: Editing, Contact Printing, Processing
4:00pm – 4:30pm: Projection and final thoughts
Sunday, Apr 6 at UnionDocs
10:00am – 10:30am: Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
10:30am – 12:30pm: Session with Jodie Mack
12:30am – 2:00pm: Lunch & move to Negativeland
2:00pm – 4:00pm: Wrap up session discussion, additional exercises/discussion
Each day follows this general structure, with some minor variations and substitutions:
Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Share / Discussion / Exercise
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Workshop Exercise + Critique
Josh Lewis is an artist and filmmaker working primarily with photochemical material. Approaching film as a medium with both formal and spiritual capacities, he looks to the moving image as a means of exploring the sublime, the boundaries of manual knowledge and the persisting enigma of material potential. His works have screened widely and won various awards at film festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, 25fps, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is the founder and co-runner of Negativeland, a 16mm and Super-8mm laboratory and moving image resource facility located in Ridgewood, NY, which has been operating since 2011.
Ross Meckfessel is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize materiality and poetic structures while depicting the condition of modern life through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui, and the technological landscape. His work has screened internationally and throughout the United States including in Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, and Curtas Vila Do Conde among others.
Jodie Mack (born 1983; London, UK) is an experimental animator. Her films unleash the kinetic energy of material remnants of domestic and institutional knowledge to illuminate the relationship between decoration and utility. Straddling the boundary between rigor and accessibility, her cinema questions how we ascribe value to things. Mack’s 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Locarno Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Viennale. She has presented solo programs at the 25FPS Festival, Anthology Film Archives, BFI London Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art, REDCAT, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, and Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Cinema Scope, The New York Times, and Senses of Cinema. She was a 2017/18 Radcliffe Fellow; a 2019 Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts; a 2021 MacDowell Fellow; and a 2022 Visual Studies Center Fellow. She is a Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College.
