In anticipation of FITC: Early Years, our April 11 screening of rare Super 8 films made by teen students at Film in the Cities in the 1970s, Minneapolis-based artist and educator Sam Hoolihan muses upon the unique qualities and limitations involved in working with the small-gauge film format.
I recently had the great pleasure of watching rare student-made short films from the 1970s. The films were created by teenagers at Film in the Cities, a media arts center founded in 1970 in St. Paul that offered classes and facilities whose purpose was “to foster the creation and appreciation of film, photography, sound, and video as forms of personal expression for a public of diverse ages, income levels, and backgrounds.”
-
Rick Madrid and Peggy Tieman’s Dracula and Blackula. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Vallaurie Crawford’s Paranoia. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Tim Leonard’s At the Roller Garden. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Danielle Fredrickson’s Herself. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
The films I watched were shot on Super 8 and ranged from imaginative hand-drawn animations to personal diaries, observational documentaries to tender film portraits of friends and communities. I was struck by how singular the films were: no two films were alike. Most remarkably for me, the films weren’t amateur imitations of big-budget commercial movies, something which tends to plague most student filmmaking endeavors. The films were refreshingly imaginative and potently expressed the students’ personal visions of the world. A few films even displayed some impressive courage in how they tackled fairly serious subject matter.
Some of the films that left quite an impression on me were Paranoia by Vallaurie Crawford, with its visceral burning film frames; the floating and expansive animation The Fall by Jack Bergstein; the high-energy dance film Herself by Danielle Fredrickson; the joyous and celebratory time capsule At the Roller Garden by Tim Leonard (featuring a young Jimmy Jam!); the wonderful montage of adolescent mischief and magic Let’s all go to Hell by David Blessing; and the hilarious improvisational interview film A Day at Grant’s Department Store by Antonio White. These are truly just a handful of the incredible films that were made by teens at Film in the Cities throughout the first decade.
-
David Blessing’s Let’s All Go To Hell. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Russ Chevre and Michael Gerlach’s All Americans. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
How did teenage students, many who had never made films before, create such singular and focused films? How were the films received in the community at the time? Did the students keep a print of their own films, or was everything left behind when the classes ended? How much experimental film were these kids exposed to? So many questions spin around me as I watch these films created more than 40 years ago.
Much of my personal interest and fascination with the FITC student films comes from my experiences teaching celluloid-based filmmaking in Minneapolis. For the past seven years I’ve been fortunate in being able to introduce Super 8 and 16mm film as a material for moving image projects to young artists and students. I have named the courses things like “Handmade Cinema,” “Super 8 Experimental Filmmaking,”
For young students who grew up with the ease of digital capture, editing, and sharing at their fingertips, working with these tools and materials in 2019 is quite a dramatic shift. A Super 8 film cartridge holds a total of three minutes and 15 seconds, the film is silent (there are no sound film stocks produced anymore), and the cost of the film has continued to rise each year since I began working with it. Since the film has to be physically hand-processed or shipped out to a professional lab before you can see the footage, you tend to focus all your energy and emotion into the moment of capture, not constantly pulling away mentally to review and edit. Sharing the film with others requires learning how to thread and operate a decades-old analogue projector, as well as requiring the audience to be physically present in the room. I believe working this way today in our ever-accelerating media environment is quite valuable and healthy for young students. The built-in limitations force students to slow down, to treat every second of film as precious, and to participate in more face-to-face interaction and conversation.
-
Jack Steinmann’s The Burning Church. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Alex Jackson’s A Day at Oxford. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
Despite the many limitations and challenges involved in working with these tools and materials, there is something really special and unique about the Super 8 format for me. It’s humble and intimate. It contains imperfections. The texture of film grain combined with the rhythm of a rotating shutter and tungsten bulb during projection has a warm energy to it that feels quite gentle and invigorating compared to the mental fatigue and tired eyes from looking at digital screens all day. Historically, Super 8 film was always meant to be the “amateur” or “home-movie” format, so it’s a bit of an alchemical act to transform it into a work of art. As we continue our relentless march into higher and higher resolution, viewing moving images today on Super 8 film feels more and more for me like watching a dream, a memory, an atmosphere, a feeling.
The filmmaking tools used by teenagers at Film in the Cities during the 1970s were more or less the same as the tools used today in my Super 8 class, but there are notable differences. For better or worse, my students today can immediately answer almost any technical question with a quick Google search,
It’s also compelling to think that without the option of sharing or distributing on digital media platforms, students at FITC were making films with the sole expectation and anticipation of sharing them back to their local friends and community, most likely in small, intimate screenings with a Super 8 projector. This may seem like a minor distinction, but I truly feel that shifting from making things for your local community alone to making things for an audience that is largely disembodied and virtual has a profound impact on the entire art-making process.
-
Still from What FITC Is. Photo credit: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society.
-
Still from What FITC Is. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Still from What FITC Is. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
-
Still from What FITC Is. Photo: Film in the Cities Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
I’m quite certain that none of the students at Film in the Cities back in the 1970s thought their Super 8 films would someday be projected some 40 years later inside the Walker Art Center Cinema. It is nothing short of a miracle that a collection of these unique and precious small-gauge films has survived, thanks in part to the protective hands of the Minnesota History Center Archives in St. Paul. Over an hour of these films from the “Through the Eyes of Youth, 1970–1980” reels will be available to watch inside the Walker Mediatheque.
It has been an inspiration for me as a teacher and artist to help put together this program of student films from the early years of FITC, and I’m incredibly excited with the recent news that many of the Film in the Cities students and instructors will be in attendance at the screening. Please join in celebrating a selection of these singular and imaginative films made over 40 years ago on Thursday, April 11 inside the Walker Cinema.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)