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An Open Letter to Kodak

An Open Letter to Kodak

Combined programme | IFFR 2007

Dear Kodak,
I miss 7263. I miss 7278, 7240, 4-X, and Kodachrome. My friends miss other stocks of yours, but I don’t have space to list them here. I’m not a purist, it’s not like I believe fervently in the sanctity of the 16mm image or anything. I screen in different formats, mix it up, use film and video, shoot new and old stock, scribble on prints, and so on. I just like the stuff.
Kodak, I have to tell you, your website sounds a little defensive. You say: ‘16 is not dead,’ and you have this desperate-sounding title ‘the super-16 renaissance,’ with testimonials from people still shooting 16, since they’ve ‘gotten HD out of their system.’ You really don’t have to do this. If you just came over to Rotterdam and saw this programme, you’d see there are plenty of us still making 16mm films. Really fine work.
Listen, Kodak, I’m still willing to work with you, and I still spend a lot of money on you (compared to my miniDV-wielding friends who tease me for my loyalty and financial foolishness). If I can speak for the other film makers here I’ll say: we’re still going to make 16 films. We like the process of making them and we like the feeling we get when we watch them.
This programme of shorts ranges from dissatisfaction to homecoming to a wistful good-bye. It’s made up of films I feel connected to, from archival, conceptual, nostalgic, espionage, travelogue, to handmade. It’s all in here. Wish you could be here too.
Keep in touch,
J. Perlin
Brooklyn, 2006
Special thanks to: Ariella Ben-Dov, Pablo De Ocampo, Gertjan Zuilhof and to the film makers.

An Open Letter to Kodak

The Magician’s House

Melancholy visit to a derelict house. The memories look valuable.
Still 16
Transcript

Record of an evening’s eavesdropping in a New York apartment in October 1953, four months after the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Still 16
Don’t Leave Without News

A series of chance encounters in today’s Armenia.
Still 16
I Remember Now, We Never Danced, I Miss You, Good-Bye

Everyday movement, woven into a dance of memory and loss.
Still 16
Unzufrieden

Out of the window of a Berlin apartment, a banner is hanging with the exclamation: Unzufrieden (dissatisfied).
Still 16
Notes

Animation based on drawings by Harry Gold alias Goose, sentenced in 1951 for giving nuclear secrets to the Russians.
Still 16
anything else and/or nothing at all

A film, a composition for sound and voices, all compressed into one work.
Still 16
Nostalgia (April 2001 to Present)

‘The picture of the world that’s presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality.’ (Noam Chomsky)
Still 16