A Programmer's Chronicles, July 2006

still from the documentary 13 Lakes by James Benning (USA, 2004)



by Gertjan Zuilhof


When everything changes, then the work of a programmer changes too. If I’m called now by a director whose film is nearly finished then they ask at the end of the conversation where to send the DVD. Not long ago, the question was always: “When can you come and see it? On the editing table. And the table – also inevitably an indestructible Steenbeck editing table – was always hidden away in some almost impossible to find location. At least you got to see the world. Together with the maker and the cutter and a few other people involved, you saw the film on a small monitor with the tangible expectations one would expect.

Yes, I won’t romanticise it, there were of course often painful moments. After all, they always wanted to know right away what you thought of it and enough bad films are made to make the answer often difficult. 35mm films are no longer often viewed on tables. It was almost always a 16mm film and this format has disappeared quickly and silently in recent years. Or almost disappeared. And before it’s too late, a small and tasteful farewell programme is certainly not out of place.

16mm was once (in 1923 to be precise) brought on the market for amateurs. And they stopped using it years ago. After 8mm and Super8, they have now graduated to the umpteenth generation video. News crews and documentary makers never seemed to be able to live without the material, but they have also gradually switched to video. Major features are never shot on 16mm, a few on Super16, with an eye to a blow-up. Small features and above all avant-garde work are shot on 16mm. And it is in this field that makers can still be found who have remained faithful to their material. There are film makers who think they will never take the step to digital video. They cannot live without the special grain, who have become so intertwined with the craftsmanship of tangible strips of film and the weight of film cans. Because cutting and pasting it is something very different from cut and paste. 

James Benning is the film maker who has raised the art of 16mm film to the highest level. Films such as 13 Lakes (2004) and El Valey Centro (2000) can measure up to the best produced by landscape art. You shouldn’t make comparisons like this too often – so you shouldn’t too easily compare a film maker with Vermeer – but Benning is the Ruysdael of 16mm. And why should he then not shoot his majestic landscapes on 35mm? Or on high-definition digital video? Because the film painter with camera and tripod sets off into the landscape alone – as he says – to steal his images. To steal them in forbidden military and industrial areas. He wants to be quick and manoeuvrable, even when he’s not filming off limits. And to edit himself. And do the sound himself. In other words, keep everything in his own hands and craftsmen-like 16mm is very suitable for that. If it’s up to him, Benning will continue to work on 16mm, but it’s not only up to him. For instance he is finding out that the art of 16mm projection is disappearing. That his prints made with love and his own money sometimes get shot while still pristine. Yes, even Benning can see that a day is about to dawn without 16mm.

Benning is known as an avant-garde master and in that field there are others who continue to embrace 16mm. For instance Jenny Perlin recently found out that her favourite 16mm colour film Kodak 7279 vision 500T had been taken off the market and replaced by a film that is able to compete with video better. I mean to say, if a film maker wants video, they’ll use video, but apparently that’s not the way they think at Kodak, to the chagrin of Perlin. And even if they thought otherwise, it still seems that the inevitable disappearance of 16mm film making cannot be prevented.

Because however beautiful the films of Peter B. Hutton are and however intriguingly Sharon Lockhart manages to capture her photographic gaze in moving images, this does not provide a large turnover. The last remaining cans of Kodak 7279 are on offer on eBay these days.

There are also a few remaining hotbeds of resistance outside the United States. Is no coincidence these can be found in places with a very powerful experimental tradition such as Austria and Japan. For now I cannot imagine the untiring re-filmer Dietmar Brehm using video and the young Japanese Ohuhi Shingo of the beautiful Clear People stated during the 2006 Rotterdam festival that only 16mm is able to capture daylight beautifully.

Throughout the world, not much is shot on 16mm any more. The few film makers who do use it consciously chose their material and make their special films while it still possible. An almost extinct art form.