TV Dinners is a monthly winter film club; an invitation to come together, watch a film, have a meal and a conversation. Led by artists Sarah Forrest and Virginia Hutchison, working together under the alias In the Shadow of the Hand, each month the club explores how we connect and socialise through the process of making and enjoying art.
This month, we experimented with making films, through a two-day, camera-less film workshop with invited artist Alex Hetherington. Camera-less films are an analogue filmmaking method, where footage is created by making images directly onto film. Techniques used to make camera-less films include painting with ink or dye, drawing with pens and other forms of mark-making including collaging elements like plants, insect wings and flowers onto the celluloid, or even existing film footage. Using the same principles as basic animation- making small changes to an element or elements across 24 frames per second- can generate action.
In this workshop, we explored a range of activities for the camera-less film and produce a collective film to project and watch together at the end of the second day. Participants also had a chance to record the workshop using 16mm film on a clockwork Bolex H16 camera. There is a full breakdown of the workshop here.
Following the workshop, on Sunday evening, we ran our usual TV Dinners film club, featuring the film made in the camera-less film workshop with a delicious TV dinner.
[Image: Still from Sister Films, a film by Alex Hetherington and Catherine Street, with Luke Fowler, Wendy Kirkup and Scott Baxter. 16mm, colour, sound (2022). Image courtesy of the artist.]
