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Eco-Processing or Drink Your Developer

  • AgX Film Collective - Building 18, 2nd Floor 144 Moody Street Waltham, MA USA (map)

A misnomer of a title, mostly chosen because the chemicals you can use to do this kind of work generally reside in your own home and are often based on tasty beverages such as coffee, wine and mint tea!  Does that make them safe to drink (the compounds)? Not necessarily, but it is fun to find out.*

The idea of this workshop is to explore alternative (eco/kitchen-sink) processing techniques on black and white film. There are a variety of recipes that yield excellent results.  It will be up to the participants to bring at least one roll of exposed black and white film that they wish to develop as a negative or positive. For time purposes (eco-processes take longer, sometimes A LOT longer, go figure) IF you want to develop as reversal we will use the regular D-19 + R-9 bleach process for the 1st and second developer and then use a plant or food based developer as the redeveloper.  If you wish to develop your film as negative you can use the "eco-process" of your choice as a first developer with the option to choose a table salt (it takes about 2 hours) or regular fix.  Depending on the interests of participants we can also try to use different organic/plant items to dye the film, post process.  The workshop leader will be contacting folx who sign up to assess what processes to focus on.  You may also fee free to bring your own plant, tea, mushroom, alcoholic beverage etc.... and see what happens.

Participants will be provided with a variety of recipes for all the various eco-compounds including developer, bleach and fix so that they can go home and begin to experiment after the workshop. 

Workshop will be taught by Kathryn Ramey.

*AgX does not condone or encourage the consumption of photochemistry.

PLEASE BRING: At least one roll of exposed hi-con black and white film to develop.

PRICE: $70 / Member Price:  $45 (Please change Payment Type to “Workshop” and type the name of the Workshop after selecting payment type)

Capacity: 0/12

This workshop has been fully enrolled. Please check back for new workshops!


ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR: Kathryn Ramey is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work operates at the intersection of experimental film processes and ethnographic research.  Her award winning and strongly personal films are characterized by manipulation of the celluloid including hand-processing, optical printing, and various direct animation techniques. Her scholarly interest is focused on the social history of the Avant-Garde film community, the anthropology of visual communication and the intersection between avant-garde and ethnographic film and art practices.  She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Social Science Research Council on the Arts fellowship, the LEF New England moving Image Grant and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship.  She has published articles in Visual Anthropology Review and The Independent as well as the anthologies Women’s Experimental Cinema (Duke), Made to Be Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology (U of Chicago), Anthropology and Art Practice (Berg), and Experimental film and Anthropology (Berg) has screened films at multiple film festivals and other venues including the Toronto Film Festival, the TriBeCa film festival, MadCat Women’s Film Festival, 25fps Experimental Film Festival in Zagreb, Croatia and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.Her book Experimental Filmmaking: Break the Machine is due out from Focal press in Spring 2015.  It is a thinly veiled experimental ethnography on the contemporary experimental film scene masquerading as a textbook on experimental film techniques written in the freehand voice of a zine.  


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