An overal Super-8 Documentary

[Mathijs van Oosterhoudt]

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm an art student studying in Rotterdam, the Netherlands right now. Me and a fellow-student will be making a short documentary about super-8 in it's current form and state in society. However, I was wondering, are there any documentaries about super-8 in it's most general form, either old or new? I've found about documentaries filmed on super-8, but nothing more on the subject itself except Death of the Yellow Bag.

 

Thanks in advance,

Mathijs.

[Michael Lehnert]

There have been two documentaries recently, one already broadcast and one now in post-prod phase for the Franco-German station ARTE.

 

As I can't receive ARTE in the UK (which isn't that tragic anymore as the quality has dropped significantly over the past 5 years since it became a sort of state-propaganda tool to foster the Franco-German Euro-alliance) so cannot give you the filmographic details.

 

The broadcasted docu was about Super 8 in historical context of it as a amateur medium and how it is now (apparently) a nerd-trash-independent-gig medium (a view I don't share) - the film was widely trashed for its content in the German language "Schmalfilm" magazine; the other docu that should be broadcast soonish is by a female documaker that wanted to focus on the revival of Super 8. She wrote an article in the English-langage "Smallformat" magazine about visiting Pro8mm, and doing some first shoots on S8 - the text was rather naive in many respects and had an infantile writing style that wouldn't get past my editoral desk, but it the closest that could come to what you are looking at, namely the sociology of Super 8. If that docu film has the same intellectual premise as the article, I wouldn't be too looking forward to it, though.

 

I strongly recommend that you contact Jürgen Lossau who is an active member here. He is the editor of both magazines and will certainly be kind enough to send you PDF versions of the two articles about the docu films free of charge.

Either send him a private message through this forum; or if he doesn't react (quite a busy guy), I suggest you post your request to him in this thread here which he is certainly reading as it deals with something related to him. So he is very likely to get your message and respond.

 

Sorry for not being of a greater help, and good luck with your thesis/docu.

[Michael Lehnert]

May I also remind you that forum rules ask for new members to register a username that consists of your first and last name, preferably the real ones. This is practice here and leads to the great and productive atmosphere you will be challenged to find on other forums in the "cloud".

 

Thanks for the alterations.

 

-Michael