American Cinematographer - July 1998 - 118

Introducing

the latest
addition to
the SuperCine

family

"Many filmmakers use narrow-gauge
to explore personal relationships
and also to look inward, using the
intimacy to abstractly tap into
psychological phenomena."
A great deal of the films in the
MoMA retrospective fall into the avantgarde or experimental category, and
according to Jensen provide a
"devastating and eloquent critique of
mainstream ideology." However, there
means

also

documentaries, comedies,
melodramas
and
other,
more

are

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1997) in The Big as Life program. "Levine
makes movies that are unpredictable,
immediate

and

mind¬

expanding," opined critic J. Hoberman in
Village Voice review of Levine's recent
one-man MoMA presentation.
At his MoMA screening, the wiry,
long-haired Levine sat at front-row

center in the

projection
used in The Big as Life unspoolings - is
quite intimate. And with the projectors
just behind the last row of seats -
beaming out camera originals of some of
Levine's work
the splices ran noisily
through the gate, grittily (and
purposefully, according to Jensen)
accenting the frenetic cutting of the
filmmaker's otherwise silent, visually
stunning films.
Levine's jittery, kinetic and often
densely-layered work is precisely
planned. "When Saul runs a roll of film
through his camera two and three times,
it is not haphazard," details Jensen. "He
knows exactly where on the roll each
previous image is, and creates his
overlays with great precision, because
that is the only way it can work
artistically."
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116

represented in the MoMA exhibition
include NYC-locals Richard Kern and
Tessa

Hughes-Freeland, as well as
experimental filmmaking icons Bruce
Connor and Stan

Brakhage.
Working in the small gauge is not
always an easy path to follow, of course.

narrow-

gauge community's chagrin, Regular
8mm film (25' spools of 16mm stock

which took two sets of 8mm
and

images
split apart after processing)
abandoned in the early Nineties.

were

was

because it

incarnation

is

mourned

the

small-gauge purist's
Big as Life's
eponymous 120-page catalog, Anker
attests that Super 8 does offer a much
greater image area, thanks to smaller
sprocket holes. But devotees of Regular
8mm complain that the plastic Super 8
cartridge cannot hold the film as
steadily in the gate and makes dissolves
and superimpositions impossible in
was

most cameras.

theater, which-thanks to

the limited throw of the 8mm

"Total Production

early Eighties, has been

format of choice. In

a

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until the

discontinued. And much to the

iconoclast Saul Levine, who has more
than 40 films (made between 1965 and

and 300mm f2.8 Lenses.

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briefly with home-

movie buffs and serious filmmakers

This 8mm

visceral,

Phone:

system sound-on-film Super 8 format,
which flourished

conventional genres.
One noted 8mm filmmaker is

Super 16mm formats, the T3
joins our family of 200mm f 1.8
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Reliable cameras, projectors and labs
hard to locate, and the selection of
film stocks is shrinking. The single¬
are

However,
received

sizable

a

Super 8 recently
professional boost

when the Burbank, California-based

Super8 Sound began loading a variety
professional color 35mm
negative stocks into Kodak's familiar 50'
Super 8 cartridges (see "Transforming
Super 8" AG Oct. '96).
Super8 Sound also processes
Super 8 film (black-and-white reversal,
color reversal, and negative), transfers it
of current

to video with a dedicated Rank Cinetel

telecine and

a da Vinci color corrector,
and rents and sells Beaulieu crystal-

sync Super 8 cameras. A wide variety of
lenses are also available, as are Super 8
cameras set up in full production mode
(complete with video assists).

Mainstream filmmakers most
often

use

scenes,

Super 8 for home-movie

flashbacks and other special

As a result, says Jensen,
"many have fallen in love with Super 8,
thrilled by the freedom it affords. And
when they see how wonderful Super 8
looks blown up to 35mm, they embrace
it as an aesthetic. By playing around
with 8mm, professional filmmakers can
experience a whole different kind of
sequences.

freedom."

■
American Cinematographer - July 1998

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 1998
