Using a single hundred-foot roll of 16mm film to create an unedited camera-roll film -- fresh from the lab and onto the screen -- has a certain appeal to me. Partly it’s the practical aspect of DIY efficacy that comes with circumventing the costly steps of post-production. With editing there is something diluted from this raw power of the pure, unadulterated footage, no matter how masterfully the material is pruned and refashioned. Perhaps the phrase of Allen Ginsberg, Chogyam Trungpa, and others, “First thought, best thought” expresses this energy present in the camera-roll film?

Belgian experimental film festival L’Âge d’Or comes back next October 3-10 with the second edition of its new run. 2015 celebrates the 50th anniversary of Super 8 and so for its second edition, the Âge d’Or festival has chosen to pay homage to the work of the fiercest advocates of this format, too often denigrated and considered ‘amateur’. A format however that has been, and sometimes still is, the terrain of innovative cinematic experiments, full of the constraints that only it can create.