Els Van Riel

“I studied photography in Brussels in the 80s; analogue photography – digital wasn’t there yet; a two-year course, very technical – and then film. We learned how to work with video, mostly on U-matic systems, but my love went to working with 16mm film. The school had Éclair cameras. I went on and bought my first 16mm Beaulieu camera, and started my own practice. I was falling in love with the equipment and the machines, the manual practice, and for sure the pieces of time you can have in hand.

During and after my studies, I worked as a photographer and video-maker for a supermarket in their marketing department. But in the evenings, I worked as a volunteer projectionist at the cultural center of the Leuven university, and that’s how I first discovered experimental film. And that was, for me, the eye-opener… I continued working with 16 mm… small things, gathering portraits for some time… until 2000 when Brussels was named one of the European capitals of culture. I bought projectors and made loopers for an installation, which is why I still have all this equipment to collaborate with others. Since then, I have made three mid-length films and a few shorter ones that I project on film, plus, many installations.

I see a lot of people recording on film and then finish the work digitally. For my own work, however, something about that doesn’t fit. I understand that other people do it and there’s no problem with that. But all of my film work is about film and about the magic of film. For me, when you put that on digital, the magic is lost. It just doesn’t work. The colours seem fine and the sound might be ok, but it’s not my film. It’s like a catalogue, a copy, a photograph of a painting, a reproduction. I authorise it because sometimes it’s impossible to send prints. That’s the disadvantage. People that program my work know the difference and they try always to get projectors in the booth or in the theater itself. Every country still has its technicians having the skills, people like you and me.

With my installations and short loops, I do the lab work myself and print here at Labo BxL using a printer. Difference with a shared lab like the one here is that it’s not clean all the time and there’s always a bit of dirt a stuff; but since scratches are inevitable in exhibition, it can become part of it. The longer films, however, I want them to be really clean. If there’s even one scratch, it makes a big difference to me. So for clean and correct screening copies, I need a professional lab with machines adapted for it. One where artists can come and work would be a dream. That’s a whole other level. Like L’Abominable in Paris. We don’t have that here. Here, it’s wonderful to learn the basics, try things out and experiment; I only make work here that I can redo if necessary. But if I have takes that I can’t redo, I’d rather go and have them developed and printed in a professional lab.

That said, it’s really good that a lot of people continue to work with film. It’s good to know that the more demand there is, the more Kodak a.o. will produce. Although this is also a whole other question. It has become both expensive and difficult to obtain, sometimes the delivery time even for a simple B&W print film can take too long. On the other hand, for experimentation, you can still find lots of old film stock that still works fine and you can do things with.

But in general, of course the costs are a major issue. You need a big budget, so you need good reasons to justify it. But then, it’s worth it. It is sad that film has become so expensive, but then again, everything is becoming more expensive. Film is a tool, a medium with its own language. The same way wood is different from plastic: with both, we continue to make chairs.

I fell in love with the manual work of film making itself, being busy with it, the techniques, the machines and the mechanics… Sometimes I make this joke, but, at the end, I don’t think it’s a joke: I studied film not to tell stories about the world. Other people do this much better than I do. All the narratives in my work are actually an exploration of, and an attempt to understand, the power of the moving image. I know how it works and I can make images move. But what exactly happens and why? Since 40 years now, I make films in order to figure that out. Film practice is relatively new, only about 200 years old. We can use it to tell stories, make feature films, can become big filmmakers, rich and famous if you want. But most of the stories told are just affirmations of stories that we already know. You think, “Yeah, wow, good.” Or you might say, ‘Wow, that was great acting, or wonderful photography.’ Or “Wow, that’s a really good documentary because it reveals something really important, which should be known.” All these films are indeed really important and do have the capacity to “change the world”. But I don’t use moving images for this purpose in my own work (though sometimes for friends work). My personal filmmaking is about trying to figure out why moving images exist, and what is their power including their danger. I have learnt how to work with it, and I love it, but all of my work is an attempt to answer that question. I don’t know the answer, I really don’t know. It’s about figuring it out, about figuring out what life itself is about.

Walking around with a film camera changes the way you see things compared to using a video camera. It’s a different mindset — it’s as if you have different antennas on your head, it expands your mind in a different way. For me, film touches reality harder than digital. The texture is completely different, so as the frame. In digital, the border is sharp. Because the frame is blurred in film projected on film, ti feels as if you are looking through a window, into another world beyond the screen. It’s not just a flat image, moving but stuck to the screen. Making films on video is not really my thing; it’s not my narrative. I did some video improvisation performances and created one video installation, with which I reached the limits of what I can (or want to) achieve with it.

Many more people want to work in film nowadays. Film has a value that digital doesn’t have. So I’m sure it will continue to exist, in the same way that oil painting still exists next to techniques like aquarelle and still photography. In fact, I would say it’s only just beginning. That’s why I’m happy that it’s forging its own path in the arts, alongside the digital film world. And I believe in it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue, would I…

And if you ask why, the simple answer is love: love for all the techniques and knowledge involved, and for all the people who have worked with it, and for those who still do. Many of them are just wonderful people – technicians who, after spending hours exploring all the knowledge and fiddling with it, know how to get things working again and again, for their own and our pleasure. The same goes for film development: you develop the film, take it out of the chemicals, look at it excited and think, ‘that’s looking good.’ It’s pure satisfaction. So that’s probably why.”

* This approved statement by the filmmaker is composed of edited excerpts from a longer interview.

Photo by Marc Jacobs