Let’s try to open our perception to what is happening
Among its many definitions, ... experimental film is an art form because it involves the research and investigation of intangible energies that trigger powerful perceptual explorations, constituting a fundamental motivation for the existence and promotion of filmic works.
The manipulation of time and space is a distinctive characteristic of the film form, which artists modify using both traditional artisanal techniques and digital technologies. In practice, this means inventing and manipulating the transparent film stock and photosensitive emulsions, seeking new tools to change and alter images, tampering with the mechanics of cameras and projectors - for the pleasure of evaluating the success or failure of a direct action and with the hope of conveying emotions, allowing oneself to be captivated by what one sees, and agreeing to engage the senses by shaking off the rules and habits employed during standardized cinematic screenings. To innovate, artists use both analog and digital media; and just as happened in the past in the artisanal ateliers - today in artist-run film labs, in an environment that bears no resemblance to the film industry - they master manual skills, exchange experiences and abilities, and plan and share their progress as well as audio and video software.
… As in a trance or a deep meditation, it is possible to trigger an intense transformation; for a brief moment, the self can let go of the restraints of its habitual inhibitions, dissolve the logical-consequential constructions, and provide an alternative interpretation of what is observed; reshape the visual experience to open a path toward further representations, in the same way that in lucid dreaming and hypnagogic hallucinations - during the transition from wakefulness to sleep - the hazy projections passing through the mind at that moment appear uncensored. These processes are characterized by a high degree of creativity and, in the most responsive individuals, can stimulate a synaesthetic effect of images and sounds and foster the imagination of progress and innovative solutions.
INDEPENDENT FILM SHOW 2026 is one of the most transformative experiences for sensing these energies, and this edition showcases the creative genius of Ben Russell and Esther Urlus.
Ben Russell - artist, filmmaker, curator - challenges conventions of documentary representation from within to produce intense, hypnotic, and, at times, hallucinating experiences. His curatorial work follows his filmmaking, which unfolds between experimental cinema and a form of speculative ethnography; he calls it ‘psychedelic ethnography’. Watching a film by Russell means going on a nonnarrative, ritualized journey, one that short-circuits the visceral subjective charge of psychedelia with ethnographic protocols of visualization and objectification. The particular power of his filmic work lies in underscoring the affinities and differences to be found between these two different states. An experience that he forges, on the one hand, through examining the cinematic apparatus itself and its potential for immersion and mimetic identification, and, on the other, by the very subjects and subject matter of his films, which often traverse the liminal and engage in altered states of consciousness and in secular practices of ritual and trance.
Esther Urlus is the founder of WORM Filmwerkplaats, Rotterdam, an artist-run workspace dedicated to motion picture film as an artistic, expressive medium. More and more it’s the artist-run film lab that represents the leading standard in contemporary analogue filmmaking. These labs have acquired professional, but commercially discarded equipment from all over the world. Now that artists have access to these tools, combined with the open culture-based knowledge sharing, they can move forward and innovate independently from the industry.
PROGRAMS
friday 26 june
AGAINST VISION Film Program curated by BEN RUSSELL
GUNVOR NELSON MY NAME IS OONA 1969, Sweden, 16mm, b/w, optical sound, 10 min.
ALEXANDRE LAROSE BROUILLARD #14 2013, Canada, 35mm > video, color, silent, 10 min.
XANDER MARRO with MAT BRINKMAN 01/06 2006, USA, 16mm > video, color, sound, 12 min. 33 sec.
PHILL NIBLOCK THE MAGIC SUN 1966-1969, USA, 16mm > video, b/w, sound, 16 min. 43 sec.
AGAINST VISION is a program of influences spread across a series of radiant visions. From the avant-garde diary film to the silent structural journal, from an explosion of the everyday into a concert recording that becomes an overwhelming perceptual field, this is a proposition for a kind of seeing that is less document than it is feeling, form, sound and being.
AGAINST TIME Films by BEN RUSSELL
TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) 2010, USA, S16mm > video, color, sound, 10 min.
RIVER RITES 2011, USA, S16mm > video, color, sound, 11 min.
BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER THREE 2007, USA, 35mm > video, color, sound, 11 min. 30 sec.
AGAINST TIME 2022, USA, S16mm > video, color, sound, 23 min.
ANOTHER EARTH 2025, USA, S16mm > video, color, sound, 11 min. 10 sec.
AGAINST TIME Five films drawn from a span of eighteen years, each of which assumes time to be both the medium of cinema and a site of resistance to the otherwise constant, linear and unrelenting movement forward. Featuring LSD trips, river gods, trance states, cross-fade portals, strobing sunsets and a heavy dose of the always-already present.
RUINS
LIVE AV PERFORMANCE modular synthesizer and video synthesizer, +/- 40 min.
RUINS A live improvisation that uses video and modular synthesis to produce a dynamic interface between image-as-sound and sound-as-image.
saturday 27 june
LOVE FOR ANALOG 16mm Film Compilation curated by ESTHER URLUS
MALCOLM LE GRICE BERLIN HORSE 1970, UK, 16mm > video, color, sound, 9 min.
JEFF SCHER YOURS 1997, USA, 16mm >video, color, sound, 3 min. 13 sec.
NICOLAS REY TERMINUS FOR YOU 1996, France, 16mm, b/w, optical sound, 10 min.
FRANCIEN VAN EVERDINGEN MONOLOGUE EXTERIEUR 2004, Netherlands, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min.
HANNE VAN ASTEN SCIOPTICON 2004, Netherlands, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
JOOST VAN VEEN INTERLUDE 2005, Netherlands, 16mm, b/w, sound, 2 min. 30 sec.
Driven by this artistic freedom, self-skilled film artists like myself take up the challenge to get rid of the medium’s nostalgic doom and create new opportunities for the continued use and further development of the machinery and technology of analogue film. It opens up possibilities to dive deeply into what is already possible and combine this with contemporary insights and skills to a whole new domain of expertise.
LOVE FOR COLOR 16mm Films by ESTHER URLUS
IDYLL 2008, Netherlands, 16mm hand processed and printed color print stock, 6 min.
DEEP RED 2012, Netherlands, 16mm anamorphic blow up to 35mm, hand processed, 7 min. 15 sec.
RODE MOLEN 2013, Netherlands, 16mm hand processed printed color print stock, sound Matt Kemp, 5 min. 15 sec.
KONRAD & KURFURST 2013/14, Netherlands, 16mm tinted and toned handmade b/w emulsion, sound, 7 min.
ELLI 2015/16, Netherlands, 16mm phasing zebra loops printed to color, sound by Matt Kemp, 8 min.
DELETION 2017, Netherlands, 16mm handmade emulsion loops printed to color, sound by Ji Youn Kang, 12 min.
STUDIE VOOR EEN VELDSLAG 2018/19, Netherlands, 16mm, color, optical sound, 6 min. 30 sec.
In my film work I create a link between specific historical events and stories and the (re) use of analog film techniques and inventions from the early days of photography and cinematography. I force a sometimes alienating parallel between the events or the story and the cinematic technique, to enhance the impact of the image. In addition, I create my own film material, literally, by mixing silver nitrate and bromide salt with gelatin and water to form a light-sensitive emulsion. I'm not looking for a naturalist, commercial like film material, outcome. I intend to create unique components that, by its singularity, generates a special and cinematic experience.
UNTIL THE DARKNESS GOES
EXPANDED FILM PERFORMANCE 6x16mm projectors, color, sound, 30 min.
A ‘tonal’ 16mm film performance, a sonorous poem of twilight, indistinctness and suggestiveness, I’m trying to make visible the darkness of a depressed mind. The suffering of an adolescent, my daughter. Colors and mood inspired by the famous and unique photograph ‘The Pond - Moonlight’ by Steichen (1904) and the Nocturne paintings by Whistler (1870).
The work consists of several short 16mm film loops, grouped into different sequences. Each group consists of loops with similar, but not the same, film scenes in slightly different lengths. When played simultaneously, both overlapping side by side, a phase shift occurs.
