Broadcast Lab - Inside the Filmmaker's Process

Time to read: 3 minutes plus 18 minute video

A Canadian artist working in film, video and photography, Aaron Zeghers is primarily an experimental filmmaker, utilizing analog formats, obsolete technologies, in-camera effects, various types of animation, and other experimental techniques to create his films and expanded cinema performances.

The three short films included in the Spring exhibition of Broadcast Lab at Arts Commons use very different techniques to tell their stories resulting in three pieces, that may, at first glance, look completely unrelated.

“When these three works were first requested from Arts Commons, I was honestly really surprised because I had never considered the connection between these pieces before,” says Zeghers. “But the more I considered these three works, the more I have been able to see a through line between them that speaks to the evolution of my work as - in part - a process-based experimental filmmaker.”

For Zeghers, both Don't Look Back and BLUE FILM2 ((in stasis)) were experimental works in the true sense of the word. Created back in 2012, both were born out of film creation exercises with glass, light, and in the case of ((in stasis)), water.

“Don't Look Back is actually the first example of my work on the light table animation stand, which would be frequently used in my future work including most notably Everything Turns...” says Zegher. “Don't Look Back was an exceptionally fun and easy experiment that really proved to me the versatility of this simple setup for creating images, and it proved to me how FUN making experimental films can and should be.”

((in stasis)) followed a similar track in that it used custom built technology, was created very quickly, and was process driven. The difference, however, is that rather than using light table technology, Zeghers had a bit of fun with a GoPro (new technology at the time) to capture unique underwater effects.

“The underwater images turned out really great but I wanted to further experiment with the aesthetic and manipulate them with a more tactile process, and so I shot them onto black & white 16mm film and hand-processed them - not really knowing where this would go,” says Zeghers. He then worked with local artist Andrew Milne, who had created a device that included a retrofitted Bell & Howell projector where the incandescent bulb had been replaced with multi-coloured LED.

“I took my 100ft roll of black & white underwater footage, and ran it through the machine with an unexposed roll of colour film and voila, Blue Film 2 ((in stasis)) was born.”

Everything turns...is a unique film to include in this triptych as it is influenced by these earlier works, but was completed later in Zeghers’ career, premiering in 2017. Shot on Super 8, with parts of it utilizing the same light table stand as Don’t Look Back, Everything turns... includes animated scenes that were drawn by hand on paper, and then painstakingly re-photographed on the light table, often using open-exposure photography to do light painting.

“This film was definitely more conceptual than Don't Look Back and ((in stasis)) as the whole film follows a really regimented structure (12 minutes of 1 minute segments, divided by chimes), with each of the 12 sections of the film representing the mythology of numbers 1 through 12,” says Zeghers. “The performance of Everything Turns... involves 3 projectors - the main image, and then two additional projectors with fractal lens filters that I cycle through a series of loops. One series of loops are the actual numbers, and the other series of loops are the shapes you can see. It's nearly impossible to photograph, which I also love and I feel adds to the mystical nature of the project.”

Though this film was scheduled to be performed in Calgary for the 2020 Artifact Film Fest, which was unfortunately cancelled, Zeghers hopes that Calgarians will have the opportunity to see it in its fully realized form soon. For now, you can watch all three short films below. Broadcast Lab is presented in partnership with CSIF’s Artifact Small format Film Festival.

Aaron Zeghers’ films have screened at festivals and venues around the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Vancouver IFF, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Festival du nouveau cinéma, DOXA Film Festival, and New York’s Mono No Aware. Zeghers has also toured widely with his work, performing his expanded cinema work in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Vancouver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Toronto, Rotterdam and more. As a film programmer, Zeghers is the founder of the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival and the current Festival Director for the Gimli Film Festival, Manitoba’s largest film festival.