NEW! Gerald Saul's Report on a Super 8 Screening
APRIL 1, 2012 IN REGINA, SASK

Shotgun Super 8 Film Festival with Sea+Air
Premieres of 9 super 8 films by local filmmakers!
Katrina Bray, Amber Christensen, Ian Campbell,
Daniel Suchoboki, Marcel Petit, Rob Hillstead,
Berny Hi, Ryan Hill and Gerald Saul, then
live music by Sea+Air from Germany!
Organized by Daniel Suchoboki & Gerald Saul,
and curated by Daniel Eugene Suchoboki.
Sunday, April 1, 7:30pm, $5 Facebook
Creative City Centre, 1843 Hamilton St., Regina, Saskatchewan

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Report by Gerald Saul

After Alex Rogalski told everyone here that he'd not be hosting a One Take Super 8 Event in Regina for 2011, we all worried that we'd lose momentum on super 8 activities. Daniel Suchoboki suggested a festival. He has spearheaded it. I am a co-organizer, but defer to him on most stuff.

Film Rescue is a sponsor. It processed the film for free on the tale end of their monthly film run. It's a film lab in the small town of Indian Head, a 30 minute drive from Regina, and run by Greg Miller who years ago was part owner of Exclusive Film Lab in Toronto.
Creative City is a great little grass roots arts centre which started up a year or two ago. It booked the music which follows.

The festival was done without funding or any significant institution behind it. We just want to keep up the interest. If Alex decides to return with One Take, we welcome him. If not, we are prepared to replace him in some fashion.

This is a small event with nine, single-roll, super 8 films, but they are all new and all shown on film with either recorded or live sound, or silent in one case. Unlike Alex's One Take, the filmmakers were allowed to see their films before the screening and make changes.
The screening went very well. It was a full house of about 50 people. The films were all different and all good. Gerald's photos!

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For me, a high point was Daniel Suchoboki. The film itself was simply a long static image, an outdoor scene of trees and a flowing river. Dan walks from the back of the audience towards the screen. He is carrying a large tape recorder, a microphone, and a headset. He begins to talk to the audience. We hear him amplified through his sound system. His footsteps are also amplified as he carries his live microphone with him. He walks right up to the film screen and points the microphone directly at the image of the flowing river at which point we can hear the water flowing. At this point we begin to realize that the microphone is not live at all.

The opening narration, the footsteps, and all other sounds we thought were live were really pre-recorded and being mimicked by Dan as a performance. He goes on to attach a parabolic to the microphone and we can here the geese flying above the scene. He goes into the audience and we hear the sound of people chatting/mumbling during the performance. It was all very fun. A single roll of film, 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

Berny Hi also did a beautiful and sentimental piece using a pair of projectors. One roll was black and white positive, the other was colour negative (hand processed I believe). One projector was on a rotating disc so could move. The images were sometimes on top of each other, sometimes separate (they are different images). Lenses were often obscured by a wine glass which scattered the image around the screen (and off of it). The pre-recorded voice-over was about his cat which is sick but has lived six months longer than the vets said it would. The cat itself purrs into the microphone. It was very moving, both visually and emotionally. Gerald's photo!

Gerald Saul's essay about John Porter included in Pleasure Dome's
The John Porter Film Activity Book (1998)

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