‘Films to Break Projectors’ glues, scrapes and splices 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film to create unprojectable celluloid collages. Reanimating the material reveals the colour music within and traces of ambiguous narratives that emerge from the complex loops.

image – iloobia
sound – iloobia / dissolving path
cinema iloobia 2016

awards:
Encounters 2017 BEST OF BRITISH ANIMATION AWARD
BUSHO Award 2017 BEST EXPERIMENTAL
BUSHO Student Jury Prize BEST EXPERIMENTAL

screenings:
Flatpack Festival – Birmingham, UK – April 2017
BUSHO Festival – Budapest, Hungary – Sept 2017
Encounters Film Festival – Bristol, UK – Sept 2017
BFI London Film Festival – UK – Oct 2017
Edinburgh Short Film Festival – UK – Nov 2017
Cinecity – Brighton, UK – Nov 2017
Euroshorts Festival – Poland – Nov 2017
Analogica 7 – Bolzano / Merano, Italy – Nov 2017
FIVA 07 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – Dec 2017
London Experimental Film Festival – UK – Dec 2017
Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival – Edinburgh – Jan 2018
London Short Film Festival – UK – Jan 2018
11th British Shorts Film Festival – Berlin – Jan 2018
Analogica Selection 7 Tour – San Francisco – Jan – 2018
Vancouver Island Short Film Fest – Canada – Feb 2018
Short Waves Festival – Poland – March 2018
Cardiff Animation Nights – Wales – March 2018

Approaching the process of making films in a literal sense, ‘Films to Break Projectors’ glues, scrapes and splices 35mm, 16mm, standard and super 8 film to create defective and unprojectable celluloid collages. These are hand edited and constructed from a combination of self shot footage, orphaned material and frames from a 35mm trailer of Get Shorty retrieved from an abandoned projection room.

After hand editing the film collages, each strip is scanned at very hi-resolution, frame by frame, and reassembled digitally, so that even though in a conventional sense they are defective and unprojectable as films, this process allows the celluloid to reanimate and reveal its potential motion through digital stop motion.

As there are multiple gauges combined in each strip, a single loop can be calibrated for 35mm, 16mm/8mm or super 8mm – each configuration giving a distinctly different dynamic to the moving images.

Considering each strip as visual or colour music is of primary consideration during the films hand editing and construction. Shifts in motion, contrast, colour, rhythm and the juxtaposition of action within the filmstrips alongside one another are all taken into account, akin to creating a musical score.

With the physical length of the strips allowing an inherent duration and rhythm to exist within them, (an aspect emphasised when they are looping), and with each one being a different length to one another, the tempo and nuance of the visual music is constantly shifting.

The project is inspired in part by visiting innumerable projection booths over the past few years at film festivals and cinemas across Europe, North America and the UK. Again and again I would witness an absent space where the 35mm projector once stood, where only traces of these virtually extinct machines remained.