Turn the Light Around: 16mm Performative Plant-Processed Films
Schedule
Mon, 06 Oct, 2025 at 07:30 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Princeton University | Princeton, NJ
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On MONDAY, OCTOBER 6th, at 7:30pm, FMC filmmaker-member Katherine Bauer, and Joyce Lainé, present "Turn the Light Around: 16mm Performative Plant-Processed Films" at Princeton University's James Stewart Film Theater. This screening event is organized by Professor of Visual Arts Christopher Harris in conjunction with his fall course, “Filmmaking: 16mm Analog Film Production.” It will be introduced by Julia Curl, Board Vice-President of the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art & Archaeology, with a conversation following the screening.While most analogue films today are processed using complex chemicals in a darkroom, each of the films in this program emerged from a developer composed of only plants, ashes, and water. Filmmakers Katherine Bauer and Joyce Lainé—members of the French film collectives Le Ratoire and Atelier MTK—engage in plant-based film processing as a form of collective action. Plants are thus collaborators in both the subject matter and the material revelation of their films, bringing their work into dialogue with the broader ecosystem: the sun gives life to the plants, the plants give life to the film, and the film turns the light back around to our eyes.
The program centers on the film-performance Asphalt Splendor by Le Ratoire, in which the collective sought to make a portrait of the Hudson River (or Mahicannittuk in Mahican), “the river that flows both ways.” In the summer of 2023, five members of their group traveled by canoe from Troy, New York, to “World’s End” in the Hudson Valley over the course of three weeks, filming their journey and processing the footage with water from the river and plants growing on the shores. Bauer and Lainé also capture place and time through the weeds in the other films to be screened: a turn around a temple outside of Guadalajara is processed with the surrounding beer and sage, a day at the beach becomes red from a certain seaweed, mushrooms munch emulsion to reveal mysterious mapping, and more!
This screening is free and open to the public.
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Where is it happening?
Princeton University, 88 University Square Dr, Princeton, NJ 08540, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
