Into the Wild

Into the Wild, 2020, 16mm/digital, b/w and colour, sound, 5min

Images, harvested on a farm in Mount Forest, Canada, captured with a hand-cranked Bolex, on film material that is made for sound only. Processed in buckets, in shimmering red light down by the old stables. A glimpse through the cracks, somebody is walking in the meadow, trees trembling in the wind, flowers, grass. A world that only film can see, a material flow emerging from the coupling of camera, celluloid, silver salts, chemicals, light particles and the hand of the filmmaker. The film was entirely processed by hand and chemically treated: overexposed images were brought back to life with bleach, other images were solarized and reversed.

Text Diagonale (Michele Koch): With a Bolex and analogue black-and-white material, which is actually used for sound recording, Markus Maicher captured ephemeral moments in nature on a farm in Canada and developed the film roles by hand in an improvised darkroom. Into the Wild is raw, scratched, fragile, fleeting—and full of ghostly beauty.

Distribution: Canyon Cinema, CFMDC, Light Cone

Screenings

Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Columbia
Chicago Underground Film Festival, USA
Diagonale, Austria
Filmkoop Wien, Austria
Harkat 16mm Film Festival, India
Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Turkey
Kinoskop – Analog Experimental Film Festival, Serbia
Metrokino Kulturhaus, Austria
Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival, USA
Tranås at the Fringe, Sweden
Vienna Shorts Film Festival, Austria