Obsolescent aesthetics as forms of resistance. 16mm workshop with Yago Alcover

Hamaca presents the 16 mm experimental film workshop Revisiting the territory. Obsolescent aesthetics as forms of resistance, given by Yago Alcover, member of Crater-Lab.

The creative potential of photochemical film devices is far from being obsolete. Not only that, but because of their material dimension and their connections, they can also serve to propose other ways of seeing and other experiences far removed from our constant contact with moving images. Contrary to what it often seems today, analogue formats do not have a purely aesthetic purpose, but rather cinematographic and photochemical devices serve us and impose limits that allow the filmmaker specific and unique possibilities in the act of filming/creating.

The workshop will explore the multiple possibilities of 16mm filming: from the visual and sequential field, to the different possibilities of structural writing, to the different parameters and spatial and temporal spaces that the Bolex camera offers to confront both the planned and the unexpected, which often plays a crucial role in working with analogue techniques due to their irreversibility. After filming, we will work on the enormous possibilities offered by hand and experimental development, opening up an aesthetic world in which the possibilities of (d-)effects and/or errors (controlled or not) surprise us with their unforeseen images. The aim of this workshop is to reflect, in a theoretical-practical way, on the transformations in the immediate vicinity of the laboratory and the Hangar arts centre, which represent the way in which some of the most violent forms of power and transformation that we suffer manifest themselves in a more immediate and plausible way: urban transformations. We will approach analogue film as an apparatus that holds a multitude of possibilities from a variety of perspectives, both as a creative element, a political tool and a device of resistance. By looking at the processes of writing, filming, developing and finally screening, we aim to discover how the concepts of control and chance that we impose on ourselves during the creative processes of working with analogue film manifest themselves and how this results in an unusual viewing experience.

The aim or final result of the workshop will be the creation of a collective film, based on observation and expression exercises, divided into different working groups that will focus on different ways of approaching the conflict involved in urban transformations and how we can confront it with one of our best weapons: representation through moving images.

Session 1: Theory and viewing
The cinematographic apparatus.
The photochemical image.
Approaches to space and territory in experimental cinema.
Reference works.

Session 2. The shooting
The camera and image writing.
Visual and sequential forms of writing.
Structures, previews, improvisations.

Session 3. Development
The photochemical laboratory.
Recipes for experimentation.
Preparing the projection.

Practical information

Days and times: 30 January from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., 31 January from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 1 February from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Venue: Antigues oficines, Hangar
Price: 50€ general public / 25€ Amigas Hamaca option 2
Registration here