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Cameraless Filmmaking: Photograms & Ray-o-grams

  • AgX Film Collective 144 Moody Street, Building 18, 2nd Floor Waltham, MA, 02453 United States (map)
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This workshop requires no previous experience with film. We won’t be using cameras, so there aren’t any machines to learn or any lenses to focus. We’ll first work with unexposed film with the lights on using developer and fixer to paint on the film and create abstract positive and negative film loops.

Then we turn out the lights and begin to use small objects like paper clips and beads and safety pins and string and earrings and lace and small seed pods or spices --- anything that can cast a shadow -- and use flashlights to expose the film. We’ll stuff it in a small tank and develop it. Then we can lay dry, developed film onto the unexposed film and create a reversed or positive of the film. Everyone will create film loops that we’ll be able to project for one another by the end of the workshop.

What to Bring: No experience necessary. Bring SMALL objects that cast a shadow on 16mm film.

What's Provided: Film, chemistry and flashlights provided.

How to Register: Space is limited, so please sign up via the workshop registration link by a deadline of Friday, March 6, at 5pm. There may be workshop spots available at a discounted rate.  If you are unable to afford the cost of this workshop, please email AgX.

Workshop Cost: $40 for the General Public / $25 for AgX Members

Max number of participants: 10

See who’s going / invite friends: Facebook Event

Questions? E-mail hi@agxfilm.org

About the Instructor:

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Kathryn Ramey is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work operates at the intersection of experimental film processes and ethnographic research. Her deeply personal films are characterized by manipulation of celluloid including hand-processing, optical printing, and various direct animation techniques. Her scholarly interest focuses 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 is the author of the book Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE and a full professor at Emerson College in Boston MA.

Earlier Event: February 23
AgX Work-in-Progress Screening
Later Event: March 15
The Joy of Contact Printing