[Frameworks] Daylight Spools, and 16mm activism: Anyone? (Buehler?)

[nicky.hamlyn at talktalk.net]

There are lots of good suggestions here, especially a symposium. Here in the UK No.w.here have B&W processing, contact and optical printing facilities, and run regular courses, which are very hands-on in nature. Their activities have stimulated a new generation of young filmmakers to work with 16mm. Mich of the work is performance-based and uses small amounts of film, for obvious reasons, although there are also the high-end gallery artists still using it; Rosa Barba, Runa Islam, Daria Martin, Tacita Dean etc -mostly women, interestingly.

There are also several artist-run labs scattered throughout Europe, and at least two labs in London, iDailies and Cinelab, are considering starting to print 16mm, in addition to the two that have been doing so continuously for many years; Prestech (mainly a conservation/restoration lab that also does 16mm) and Film and Photo. Perhaps a start would be to compile a directory of existing facilities and resources to get a picture of what's out there and what's viable. Frameworks members' collective knowledge and expertise should make this easy!

Nicky.


 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>
Sent: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 21:10
Subject: [Frameworks] Daylight Spools, and 16mm activism: Anyone? (Buehler?)


> The daylight spool issue is important. I always try to remember to ask the lab 
to return them otherwise they keep them and sell them.
> 

I don't know how things are in the UK or US at present, but back in the last 
decade when I was spooling off 400' cores onto 100' daylight loads for my 
students, there were several labs (can't remember which, sorry) that would send 
me as many 100' daylight spools as I asked for for the cost of shipping alone. 
The labs that processed lots of 100' loads for schools etc. always had more 
empty daylight spools than they wanted to store, since they always returned the 
processed film on those white plastic reels. I suppose (sigh) when labs have 
gone under, their stock of daylight spools have mostly gone into the recycling 
bin. But there might be a bunch in a storage locker somewhere.

It would certainly be worth contacting any and all labs that still process any 
significant amount of 100' loads to find out what they do with the empty 
daylight spools, and under what conditions they're willing to part with them.

..........

Which brings me back to the subject of 16mm makers and teachers organizing to 
deal with issues related to keeping the format viable. I'm disappointed (though 
not at all surprised) that there has been zero response on this list to Alex 
Belkam's original suggestion about this, or my reply. The idea of Organizing 
experimental film folks may seem like herding cats, but it had to have been 
possible to some degree at one time at least, or else the Coops wouldn't exist, 
right?

The 'vibe' I'm getting from the comments in the "[Frameworks] Kodak Film Stocks 
to be Discontinued, Announced in December" thread is 'someone will pick up the 
slack of stock production when Kodak folds, so we don't have to do anything, at 
least not collectively.' IMHO, any such thought is painfully naive. The 16mm 
ship has been sinking steadily through our young century. The first big blows 
were the discontinuation of 7240 and Fuji stepping out of the game, and the 
situation just keeps getting worse every year. You can't look at the actual 
trends over time, and the continuing relevance of the reasons behind them, and 
realistically imagine things are going to level off at some point, or even slow 
down, more or less by themselves. You can search the Frameworks archives going 
back 15 years, in the endless 'film vs. video' threads, and you'll find the 
posts about 16mm viability and the future prospects of 16mm to overwhelmingly 
dominated by what has proved to be sad wishful thinking.

The time to organize is not now. It was 15 years ago, but at that point in time 
a little foresight would have been required. But by 2005, the need for 
collective action should have been obvious. Now it's screaming at the top of 
it's lungs, flailing it's arms and jumping up and down. Is anybody paying 
attention?

The daylight spool issue Nicky raises is pretty damn important, but it's just 
the tippy-top of a very big iceberg. Who's the youngest tech anyone can name who 
can fix a Bolex or Beaulieu? If you came name anyone who'll service a Filmo or 
K100, same question. Can you name anyone under 30 who's learning this trade? How 
do you imagine the knowledge and skills of Dieter, Jean-Louis, Bernie, Andrew, 
Dwight et. al. are going to be passed on to the next generation?

"If we don't hang together, we will surely all hand separately" - Benjamin 
Franklin.

Given that 'you should organize' is a fairly vague proposition, I shall suggest 
a possible concrete step in that direction. A 16mm maker/teacher on the 
full-time faculty of a well-regarded college or university (**cough**howboutRogerBeebe**cough) 
should try to get their institution to hold/sponsor a conference/symposium/whatever 
on 'The Future of 16mm Filmmaking' to which all the significant players would be 
invited (travel funds supplied for without institutional support), for the 
purpose of sharing ideas, coming up with a plan, and moving toward putting it 
into action. As an exemplar of such a move's utility, I would point to Dan 
Streible, who more or less single-handedly started the Orphan Film movement by 
getting symposia off the ground which pulled in enough people to start a 
Movement for the Cause. As a pragmatic aside, I'd note that being in on the 
ground floor of an academic movement is a great way to achieve tenure, or get 
promoted from Associate to Full.

And you won't even have to sing the chorus of 'Alice's Restaurant' to a 
psychologist.
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