FMSA 221: Analogue Practices

While cultural industries and artists embrace digital technologies for filmmaking and media art, analogue film technologies such as 8, Super-8, and 16 mm film production and analogue audio and even VHS have enjoyed a renaissance amongst artist-practitioners in a worldwide movement often called Handmade Cinema, Conceptual Cinema and the old monikers of Avant-garde, Visionary, Experimental Film, Para- or Expanded Cinema. Often employing hand-processing and chemistry, making one's own filmstock, performance and live presentations, collectives and co-creational stategies, and even digital interventions, film and analogue audio are once again no longer treated as "capture media" but rather utilized/ and celebrated in concert with performance and other retro technologies for their luscious materialities and rich historical legacies, both locally and internationally. This course offers a critical overview of the practice regarding both historical and contemporary work, and a space to seek the integration of theory and practice. Safety procedures/ best practices/ sustainability issues to be explored and dealt with in this course. The optical printer, analogue titling, interfaces with the digital, and DIY maker culture will be explored. Genres highlighted will be the personal film, as well as the found footage film, a precursor to the modern day mash-up, which is enjoying a lively worldwide renaissance.