Printing Imperfect Movies At Home

DIY printing using copy machines and home printers is a living tradition across movements and subcultures as an accessible and cost-effective way to create things like personal zines, poetry chapbooks, scene reports, and insurgent manifestos. In this workshop led by Alex Mejia, participants will experiment with this wonderfully imperfect, lo-fi, high-contrast, black & white aesthetic using text, found footage and animations as source material that will be printed directly onto 16mm film leader to create homemade movies without cameras or photochemical processes. Building on the lo-fi zine aesthetic/practice, participants will engage in simple writing exercises that respond to the images – turning mistakes, glitches, and distortions into language-based material. Participants will leave the workshop with handmade, printed 16mm film loops, as well as video capture of the footage, to carry into future moving image projects.