Analog Alchemy: 16mm Film Workshop
By Mothlight Microcinema
During this 4-day intensive workshop taught by Shanna Maurizi and Julia Yezbick participants learned the basic functions of how to operate a 16mm Bolex camera. They had the opportunity to shoot black and white film with the Bolex and explore the creative potential of a 3D-printed matte box for the Bolex! 3D printing allows us to level the field, as specialized film equipment is expensive and is scarce in Detroit. The matte box will allowed us to experiment with double exposures and in-camera special effects; building upon some things Mothlight tested in their last workshop.
Mothlight Microcinema Is:
Shanna Maurizi (USA) is an artist and filmmaker. She studied at San Francisco State University and UC Santa Cruz, and received an MFA in Film from California College of the Arts. Shanna’s films have been exhibited at festivals, museums, galleries and cinematheques worldwide including Experiments in Cinema, AAFF, Other Cinema, Anthology Film Archives and many others. Her work seeks out access points to the unknown, realized in works on paper, film and video, and sculpture. Her film Sunken Treasure won the Art and Science Award at the 56th AAFF, her short film Late Night with Carl Sagan premiered at NewFilmmakers (NYC), and she was nominated for Best Emerging Director for her first feature at Visionfest (NYC) in 2011. Her artwork in the gallery context has been shown most recently at LaMaMa Gallery (NYC), and her previous solo shows were reviewed as Critic’s Picks on Art F City. As a curator she co-founded The Red Door and The Climax A Movie House (Oakland CA) and the collective space Songs for Presidents (NYC) and she taught in the film department at NYU. Currently she is leading 16mm workshops in Detroit with Mothlight Collective.
Julia Yezbick (she/her, b. 1980) is a filmmaker, artist, and anthropologist. She received her PhD in Media Anthropology and Critical Media Practice from Harvard University and an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. Yezbick's creative practice is primarily one of experimental nonfiction addressing topics of labor, movement and the body, feminism, and social commentary on issues ranging from ethnicity and gender to housing and urban transformations. Her work has been exhibited at various international festivals and venues including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the New York Library for Performing Arts, Station Arts Space (Beirut), the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Broad Underground Film series (Lansing), the AgX Film Collective (Boston), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, and the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Yezbick is a co-founder of Mothlight Microcinema, a small nomadic film series that has been screening experimental film and video to Detroit audiences since 2012. She was a 2018 Kresge Artist Fellow for film and is currently an Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Studies at Wayne State University.
