Moving Stills
8-9.8.2024 kl(o) 9-15
This workshop by filmmaker Luis Macias explores different tools and possibilities around the multiple photographic slide projector. It regards the projector as a tool and the slide as a non-static image. During the workshop the participants will learn different modifications both internal and external that can be easily done with different technological and DIY devices. At the same time, participants will also learn different image processes both from a plastic and physical perspective.
The workshop is mainly practical and the participants will learn how to create, intervene and develop color 35mm prints and also explore creative ways of live projection with multiple carousel slide projectors. The workshop ends with a collective improvised expanded cinema exercise at the opening night of the festival.
Participation fee: 80€
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Luis Macias (ES) is an artist, filmmaker, and image-moving composer. His work explores the formal and spectral properties of moving images, focusing on the cinematographic device and the photochemical nature of the film. Using Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, and video formats, he creates pieces for projection, performance, and installation, often emphasizing the experimental and procedural analog practices.
His films have been featured at prestigious festivals, art centers, museums, and other art contexts worldwide. Luis is a co-founder of independent analog CRATER LAB in Barcelona.
He conducts workshops on experimental film and teaches at art-film schools like EQZE.
Camera Obscura
10-12.8.2024 kl(o) 9-15
This 3-day workshop guides participants through the transformation of a camera obscura which will then be used to capture ultra large scale paper negatives of the view from the space. The prints will be exposed directly onto giant sheets cut from rolls of photo sensitive paper and processed using a pop up darkroom constructed inside the camera itself. The class will work together to create giant positive prints using these negatives through the use of a rudimentary contact printing process and explore a range of
experimental developing techniques. Through a practical and hands-on approach, (and a lot of problem solving!) students will learn about the mechanics and optics of the camera obscura as well as a range of analog black and white photographic processes.
Participation fee: 120€
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Brendan Barry (UK) is a photographer, educator, and camera builder whose innovative photographic practice blends construction, education, performance, and participation. Fascinated by the mechanics of vision and the processes of analogue photography, he transforms objects and environments into spaces capable of viewing and making a photographic image. His work emphasizes the process and materiality of photography, including the passage of light through a lens, the heightened awareness from being inside a camera obscura, and the magical moment when an image is captured on photo-sensitive paper. This practice is central to his personal experience and his engagement with others in collaborative exploration.
Brendan is the founder and director of Positive Light Projects, a non-profit organization that uses visual arts to engage and inspire diverse audiences and communities. The organization also supports emerging artists, helping them advance their practices in exciting and innovative ways.
Organic Film Development and Tinting
10-11.8.2024 kl(o) 9-15
In recent years, there has been a growing concern to find photographic development methods that are less harmful to the environment. A little more widely known is the caffenol technique, which replaces the developing chemicals with a mixture of coffee and vitamin C. The active ingredients necessary to develop film have also been found in many plants. In this 2-day workshop, you will shoot on 16mm black and white negative film, prepare organic developer and tint, develop the film and tint found/existing footage.
Participation fee: 80€
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Azucena Losana (MX) practice encompasses experimental filmmaking, installation, and video art. She pursued multimedia arts at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes in Argentina and earned a diploma in audiovisual preservation and restoration from the Cinemateca y Archivo de la Imagen Nacional de Argentina, in collaboration with the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her work has been featured at prestigious festivals including the Buenos Aires Festival de Cine Independiente, Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, Kurzfilmtage in Oberhausen, Germany, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico in La Coruña, and VIDEOEX in Zurich. She currently splits her time between Mexico City and Buenos Aires.
Elena Pardo (MX) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Mexico City, specializing in documentary, experimental, and animation films. Her work shows the potential of photochemical films for image preservation and creation, with a focus on laboratory techniques. Since 2005, she has been a member of the extended film collective Trinchera Ensamble. Additionally, she co-founded and currently directs the Laboratorio Experimental de Cine (LEC), an artistic initiative established in 2013. LEC is dedicated to the dissemination, production, education, and programming of various cinematic formats.
Cyanotype
12.8.2024 kl(o) 9-15
The possibility of printing photographic negatives on an inkjet printer has caused a renaissance for historical processes like cyanotype, salt print, palladium and carbon prints.
The classic cyanotype process is usually used to contact print flowers and shapes. In this one-day workshop we will introduce a hybrid workflow to print photorealistic print with the cyanotype process from digital negatives and enhance the final look with herbal toning.
Participation fee: 40€
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Anders Bigum is a Danish visual artist. He brings a distinctive perspective to the collaboration. His ongoing artistic work explores interplay between reality and fiction, alternative photographic processes, experimental film making and manipulation of audio/visual live feeds—an embodiment of innovative spirit and boundary-pushing creativity.
Gry Björge is Danish designer based in Berlin. In 2013, she successfully completed her industrial design degree at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. Her portfolio showcases a wide range of artistic expression, spanning sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, and textile art. One of her distinctive abilities is merging shapes, colours, and materials to create exceptional new objects. Her approach allows her to craft innovative and captivating pieces that ignites the imagination and leaves a lasting impression.
Their artistic collaboration creates an interdisciplinary dialog that resonates with the environment, and a deep connection to the geographic location of creation.
Print, project, perform by Britt Al-Busultan (NL/FI)
6–8.5.2025 kl(o) 10-16
The workshop introduces techniques and tools for working with expanded cinema performances.
In this 3-day workshop, we will be experimenting with creating matts, rayogramming and printing in multiple layers on a Steenbeck editing table. The loops that we create from this material will be used to experiment with expanded cinema performance with multiple projectors. The workshop will culminate in a collective performance by the workshop participants.
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have and some curiosity and will to get dirty mixing chemistry, appropriate outdoor clothing for filming outside, and clothes which can get messy in the darkroom.
Cost: We ask for a limited fee of 500kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low-waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
The workshop language is english.
PFL provides equipment and material for the workshop
If you have any questions email: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
Introduction to Videokunstarkivet
8.5.2025 kl(o) 16-18
This seminar is directed towards artists who want an introduction into the use of the Videokunstarkivet portal for work registration and file uploading. Videokunstarkivet is a reference archive which is dependent on artists uploading and registering information about their own work with the accompanying files. The workshop is led by Håvard Oppøyen from the National Museum’s library and archive department, who is responsible for Videokunstarkivet. Håvard has more than 30 years experience working with the preservation of film and video at the Norwegian Film Institute and the National Library, among others, where he has worked with preservation, restoration and mediation of film.
Videokunstarkivet is a voluntary archive which offers artists the opportunity to save information and files from their artworks in a safe way, so that their works can be securely preserved. Through the workshop, we will, among others, see how information and metadata is connected to work and how to upload files. This gives an introduction to how the archive is structured and how the archive can be used by curators, art historians and researchers.
Since January 2021, Videokunstarkivet has been brought under the wing of the reference archive in the National Museum’s library and archive department. The goal is for it to be a living and up-to-date archive, an overview of video art and all of the related art forms made in Norway from the 1960’s up until the present – and into the future.
Draw with the Sun! A children’s workshop with Anne Lindgard Møller
11.5.2025 kl(o) 10.30-12.30
Come make your own sun drawings with paper, tape, creativity, light and time!
Inspired by the the artwork ‘Melody in minor’ by Anne Lindgaard Møller presented in the current exhibition ‘We Circle in Darkness, Consumed by Light’ at Tromsø Kunstforening children and young people from the age of 8 are invited to join the artist in a workshop where participants will be introduced to how to use sunlight as a tool to make images. During the workshop participants will cut and paste in paper and work with layering to create abstract or figurative collages. We will hang the collages in windows and use sunlight to bleach motives onto coloured paper. Participants can either bring collages home to bleach or have them bleach in the windows of Tromsø Kunstforening for approximately a month (possibly longer, depending on the amount of sunlight during May/June in Tromsø).
The workshop is a part of the Silver Record festival. The festival provides materials. There is free admission and drop in at the workshop, warmly welcome!
Arctic Photographic Garden by Ricardo Leite (PT)
8–9.5.2025 kl(o) 10–16, 10–14
In 2012, after starting to research biodegradable film processing, I thought about growing a garden with the plants I already knew could work as a developing agent or as another useful ingredient in film processing. My first photographic garden was planted next to my lab in Porto, but I started to grow many others in different countries, such as a small garden that I planted in 2016 outside LIFT in Toronto during a residency which is still being used.
Native ingredients are a more interesting object of study. Caffenol is undoubtedly an effective film developer, but coffee seeds don’t grow in most parts of the planet. In a temperate climate, it’s easier to test spearmint or hyacinth because we can grow them in our place of study. Photographic gardens are not only poetic and ecological but also a very useful tool to grow next to your film laboratories.
The Arctic poses a new challenge since its specific climate inhibits growing the same plants that can easily thrive in a temperate climate. Some flowers and berries can be one solution, and the list could be bigger than one might expect: Mountain Avens (Dryas octopetala), Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum), Arctic Poppy (Papaver radicatum), Dwarf Fireweed (Chamaenerion latifolium) and other flowers can contain flavonoids, phenolic compounds, tannins and many acids like salicylic and gallic that can act as an effective film developer. Other plants can also be grown inside, aromatics from the Lamiaceae family like the popular spearmint (Mentha spicata) or even the Brazilian boldo (Plectranthus barbatus) are not only useful for medicinal or culinary purposes but also as very effective developing agents in film processing.
Together we will collect and forage for local plants which might make good developers, while filming the process, and develop the film using the plants.
As part of the workshop we will provide: Film stock, equipment, chemicals, our time and some different experience working with different analogue equipment/formats, lunch and coffee :)
What you provide: Cooperation, any knowledge that you have and some curiosity and will to get dirty picking plants and mixing chemistry, appropriate outdoor clothing for being outside for a long tim, and clothes which can get messy in the darkroom.
Cost
We ask for a limited fee of 300kr to cover some of the costs of materials, but if you are unwaged/low-waged get in touch as we have some free spaces. We aim to make Polar Film Lab as accessible as possible, for as broad a group as possible, and aim to offer as much free or on a ‘Pay what you can’ framework as possible - if you receive project funding or have an income, we ask that you help us keep doing what we are doing by paying a small fee.
If you have any questions email: polarfilmlab@gmail.com
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