Floating hums, flickering dreams, a reel flutters to an end..
The 8th 16mm film festival begins this Friday.
One of the biggest travesties to happen to cinema is the disconnection between makers, audience and the material that is film. Very slowly over decades, on the pretext of technology and innovation, the apparatus of cinema making has been hidden away. From makers and audience alike. Early filmmakers were all master craftspeople - people who knew every aspect of their process, much like an oil painter knew his paints, or a weaver knew his loom.
And then came the need to industrialise everything.
First went the chemistry from the makers hands - off to a lab, where you would just send your film and wait for it to appear.
Then went the projector from the screening rooms to hidden booths in the back.
And in came the popcorn.
The argument was that people and makers were only interested in the visuals and sound, but somehow, all these small acts of ‘chipping away at a form’ slowly stripped away the conscious attention, and respect that cinema once commanded. Then, the democratisation of the form ushered in a very important new wave of telling.
But how do we keep it together in an age where millions of similar visuals are made every second? It’s almost like we exchanged our tools for the convenience of making and then, half of us forgot how to make anymore.
As cinema goes through a bankruptcy of sorts (with a few exceptions who we like to think of as flickering, guiding lights), one keeps returning to the same thought;
How to keep finding new ways of seeing, bringing discovery back into our work, a sense of play, to make for self, sharing and disciplining ourselves to keep perfecting our craft - along with keeping an unspoken pledge to cinema going and to keep moving the medium forward. In a way, the medium itself shouldn’t matter while doing this. Digital image-making is its own way of making. We just want to share our way, our little inroad into what we’ve found works for us.
What excites us, what we think is magical…
And that is photo-chemistry. Playing with analog devices to manipulate images. To make with no bounds.
It’s a peculiar combination of knowing one’s craft deeply but also going with the flow; keeping one’s sense of wonder, remembering why we make to begin with, following the baby steps of a budding anarchist.
Film writer and academic Kim Knowles calls spaces like Harkat ‘sites of photo-chemical resistance’ and here we are, in the middle of the industry - making, being, resisting, existing, loving and doing.
And with that - we present to you the 16mm film festival 2024, our marker in the sands of the year.
For full programme and tickets, go to https://insider.in/16mm-film-festival-dec6-2024/event
This year, we are thrilled to welcome Luis Macias from Crater lab, Barcelona, who brings with him a programme of his films and photo chemical performances, Raju Roychowdhury, a physicist moonlighting as an experimental film curator with a selection of experimental films from Brazil, a secret screening of a popular old Hindi film on a 35mm print‼️ 📽️, some beautiful submissions from all around the world and a very special yearly programme of @straight_8_ indian entries and Harkat’s freshly made Ek-Minute films.
Come experience three days of photochemical bliss, witness different practices in image making, and get a feel of what immersing yourself in a medium could be.
Welcome to a brand new version of the Harkat newsletter. We will try and share more and sell less. Even though we just want you to come to our shows, only because we want to achingly show them to you :))