(Lynne Sachs | b&w/sound | 4:47 | 16mm to digital | US)

Lynne Sachs films her daughter Maya in 16mm black and white film, at ages 6, 16 and 24. At each iteration, Maya runs around her mother, in a circle – clockwise – as if propelling herself in the same direction as time, forward. Conscious of the strange simultaneous temporal landscape that only film can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each distinct age.

(Christina Nguyen | color/sound | 2:53 | 16mm to digital | US)

sun light, sun set, sun rise, sun ray. a hand processed in camera roll shot on Kodak 3383 color print stock.

(Eric Stewart | color/sound | 7:14 | 16mm to digital | US)

Filmed over the course of several years in southern Colorado, Hemispheres is a quiet study in pattern and place, as observed through the window of my living room. Shot on Super 16mm film, the project layers multiple time-lapse exposures of cacti and seasonal light, capturing subtle shifts in color, atmosphere, and rhythm. Like the inlay of a sundial meeting a garden’s creeping vines, what emerges is not a photograph of a singular view or moment, but a composite drawing of duration—using light to trace the intersecting cycles of growth and dormancy, brightness and shadow, warm and cool, seasonal progression and retreat…

(Lucy Ellis | color/sound | 1:50 | 35mm to digital | UK)

Stock uses both new and obsolete digital stock imagery transferred onto 35mm film through UV printing, pen plotting and sticker transfer. Drawing parallels between the vertical storage of information digitally and on the film surface, the imagery transfers from one storage system to another allowing for a shift in line, texture and detail, a drift from digital precision. Undertaking a new form of light and a new identity (from digital to analog) the imagery becomes slow in its formation whilst unstable in nature.

(Jan Rehwinkel | b&w/sound | 5:50 | Germany)

A film without a camera: The fascination of painting tone or noise—a composition of visible sound and audible images. After experimenting with photograms on 16mm film, whose technical precision proved too much for me, I decided to switch to what I like best about filmmaking: painting what I want to see (and hear!) onto the material myself. When I work this way, I am constantly confronted with failure or the impossibility of perfection – even the contact printer I used to make the screening copy was unpredictable. But I see all of this as a creative tool and integrate it into the process.

(Penny McCann | b&w/sound | 3:39 | 16mm to digital | CA)

In this experimental film, a journey down the Danube River is transformed into a dream space of half-seen images and flickering shorelines. Though at times abstract, the river remains certain, always moving towards the sea.  Filmed in black and white 16mm and hand-processed, Fluss is a companion to River (2023), a black and white study of the Ottawa River in winter. Commissioned by Ottawa’s Lightproof Film Collective.

(Tessa Garland | b&w&color/sound | 7:25 | S 8 to digital | UK)

Shot on Super 8, the film captures a walk around a precarious, low-lying sandbank island, where fleeting observations come into focus only to vanish again. Rotations and cycles ebb and flow through manmade wind vanes assembled from foraged sea drift, while sea-worn objects hint at deeper meanings beneath the surface. Prehistoric-looking cacti punctuate the island, contributing to its strange, otherworldly atmosphere.

(Karel Doing | color/sound | 4:18 | 16mm to digital | UK)

Plant matter is used to create finely detailed indexical traces on photochemical film. The traces are not only visible but also audible. By feeding botanical textures, patterns and rhythms into the optical sound system noise, cracks, pops and hiss is generated. Seeing is hearing. Such a cross modality disobeys the usual lipsync illusion and replaces this so called realism with a radically different concreteness. Phytophonics is serious play with living material in a world that is increasingly based on simulated sham. Eco-punk against the abyss created by late-capitalism.

(Wei Gao | color/sound | 16:21 | 16mm to digital | Korea/France)

“Spring Song” was filmed from 2016 to 2024. Every spring, the filmmaker, armed with a Super 8mm camera and using the vibrant colors of Ektachrome super 8 film, or Kodak color negative film, captured the vibrant blossoms, grasses, leaves, insects, and small animals of spring. The filmmaker’s meticulous daily observations in her own rooftop garden, as well as her chance encounters in the National Forest Park, revealed a rich natural ecosystem. She also employed cameraless photography, creating images of plants through photochemical reactions between Super 8mm film, plants, and organic matter. She then combined these Super 8mm and cameraless images together to create a dynamic and colorful vision of spring. In the context of increasingly strained ecological environments, the director created a living green ecosystem in her rooftop garden, observing plants and practicing a lifestyle integrated with nature.

(Zack Parrinella | color/sound | 8:02 | 16mm print | US)

A stepped and steady progression of a line becoming a circle. Soundtrack by Zekarias Musele Thompson.

(Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy | color/sound | 6:00 16mm print | AU)

Looking at the present, as though the far future were dreaming of its ancient past – an ‘iconogenic’ vision of Australia.

(Jaiyi Chen | color/sound | 7:39 | *35mm, 16mm and interventionist tools, performed by Spencer Sundell | US)

“Mounds Above the Earth” contemplates ecological cycles, perception, and environmental transformation, anchored in the rare emergence of two periodical cicada broods surfacing simultaneously for the first time in more than two centuries. The film follows the flicker of red through the cicadas’ developing eyes, a blood moon, and a retelling of an ancient fable.

The 9th Engauge Experimental Film Festival celebrates sprocket-driven, artist-made experimental film, presenting six programs of shorts over three nights at NWFF’s cinema in Capitol Hill. All work featured in the festival originates on film stock.