From the lost cinematic art of the camera obscura to the artisanal DIY practice of the handmade film, this two-part workshop celebrates the idea of making cinema from scratch. The first part focuses on building various camera obscura prototypes; the second part focuses on various 16mm film making techniques that circumvent, even subvert, the camera and lens, literally scratching, painting, and collaging on the celluloid filmstrip.
Camera obscura is the Latin term for “dark room” and typically consists of any darkened space with a small aperture that emits into the interior a ray of light, projecting an upside-down, topsy-turvy, colorful moving image in real time. It is the predecessor of “pinhole” still photography. However, we will learn to appreciate this ancient art as the predecessor to our collective history of the moving image, freed from the fixity of the still life and from the picture perfect sharpness of our deafening hi-def technological imperative. For this is precisely the way the great Leonardo da Vinci once experienced it in his multi-disciplinary experiments in the dark room.
Cinema From Scratch dares to reimagine for the present what artist visionary Mary Crovatt Hambidge, founder of Hambidge Center, once said: “The machine is a Frankenstein we have given life and power to. We are the gods who have created it. We alone can take this power from it.” She encouraged us to observe in our media-saturated landscape the potential of a micro-revolution in the arts for us “little cogs” in the machine: “I’d rather be one little cog in the wheel of truth than the entire wheel in a machine of lies.” This workshop is dedicated to the power of Mary’s little cog against the great Frankensteinian machinery (let’s call it Hollywood for now, the “machine of lies.”).
Workshop Cinema from Scratch: From Camera Obscura to Handmade Film
Leaders Gibson + Recoder
Fee $1125-$1275 (These prices include lodging and meals. Special pricing is available for our Local Community members.)
Materials Fee $50
Experience Level All levels are welcome. Ages 21 & over only.
Photo by Taylor Kallio
Sandra Gibson holds a BA in Film from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Moving Image Archiving & Preservation from New York University. Luis Recoder holds an MFA in Film from the Art Institute of San Francisco and a PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research.
Gibson + Recoder have exhibited their celebrated expanded cinema performances and installations since 2000. Their works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Memorial Art Gallery, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive, and Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. Artist fellowships include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, and Hambidge Center. Lecturing appointments include a visiting faculty position in the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder. Gibson + Recoder live and work in New York.