The Chicago Film Society Presents: Celluloid Now Program 3 — To the Lamphouse: Light & Lenses for Projection Explained
@ Chicago Film Society Office
RSVP for address
Opening Saturday, October 11th, at 12PM
Free admission with RSVP; space is limited.
The Chicago Film Society is proud to welcome you to the third edition of Celluloid Now: four days of screenings, workshops, and other events showcasing the work of analog filmmakers and artists, alongside archival rediscoveries and restoration
Celluloid Now 2025 will take place October 9 – 12
At CFS, we spend a lot of time talking about the film prints we show, their history as physical objects, and characteristics inherent to the way they were produced. Equally important are the light sources that illuminate them, and the optics which make them visible to the human eye. This interactive workshop will focus on projector light sources — both historical and those still in use today — projection lenses and other optics, and other variables that affect how light travels to a cinema screen.
Also included in this program are two expanded cinema works which creatively redirect the flow of light as it moves beyond the film gate and towards the screen. Mostly assembled from scrapped commercial 16mm audiovisual materials, Malcolm Le Grice’s Castle One features a unique presentation apparatus designed to maximally disrupt its own projection: a bare light bulb is hung in front of the screen for the duration of the film and periodically turned on and off, effectively nullifying the image with every flash. In her performance piece Anna, Chae Yu guides a modified anamorphic compression lens through a set of optical choreographies. With every twisting, repositioning, and resettling movement, clusters of luminance disperse, shapes divide or multiply themselves, blotches of color cohere into patches of light, or dissemble back into dimness, all of this set to the clanging accompaniment of the projector’s own amplified innards.
The following works will screen in tandem with an interactive workshop on projector light sources, lenses, and optics:
Castle One (1966, Malcolm Le Grice, 18 min.) — 16mm w/ light bulb
Anna (2024–2025, Chae Yu, 15 min.) — artist-operated 16mm
Runtime: Approx. 90 minutes
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Tags: Celluloid Now, Celluloid Now Program 3 — To the Lamphouse: Light & Lenses for Projection Explained, CFS, Chae Yu, Chicago Film Society, Malcolm Le Grice, The Chicago Film Society Presents, Workshop
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