Analogue Practices in Digital Landscapes

In this film, I experiment with ethnographic research methods and modes of representation to depict analogue film communities, filmmaking practices in Berlin and Vienna, and the mechanical repair and photography milieus in Istanbul. For the past two years, I have conducted an empirical study of analogue film materiality and the maintenance of older media infrastructures. I address the obsolescence of media technologies in the digital age, in which the newest technologies are rapidly becoming obsolete. On the one hand, through a focus on the technical survival of film, practices in the artist-run film laboratories of filmkoop Vienna and LaborBerlin form an essential part of this film. On the other hand, Istanbul’s artistic historicity and its particular geopolitical and economic conditions give an intercultural context to these analogue practices that flourish in Europe.