As time passes and we become more entrenched in this digital age, we forget about the importance of analog. Audiophiles argue that the warm sound provided by a record cannot be compared to the tin sound of CDs. A similar attitude gave rise to Calgary’s $100 Film Festival, now in it’s 19th year, which showcases Super 8 and 16 mm film projects.
“The festival started in 1992 as a Super 8 Film Festival and at the time people were complaining that, ‘Film is dead’ and ‘It’s too expensive to shoot’ and ‘There’s no reason to do it,’ ” says Festival Coordinator Melanie Wilmink. “So the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers created this film festival as a challenge to local filmmakers to make a short film on Super 8 and at the time, four rolls of Super 8 and processing was $100.”
Though the challenge in the ’90s was VHS and other more cost-effective analog formats, that has changed. The rising spectre of digital filmmaking casts a shadow on older formats seen as cumbersome to work with and more expensive to process. Despite these changes that render the name obsolete, the festival still sticks to its original mandateÂ: to demonstrate that film is not dead.
“The festival really is about the beauty of film and the choice of finishing to film,” says Wilmink. “The type of films that get finished to film nowadays lean towards art films because the choice to work on film is more expensive than working on digital formats, especially finishing to film.”
The festival attracts a specific kind of filmmaker as finishing on film can be extraordinarily time consuming and quite difficult — filmmakers have to literally cut and splice their films together to get the finished product.
“For me, I’ve always shot on film,” says festival participant Kyle Thomas. “It’s only been my last few films that I’ve gone to HD. I don’t want to say that it’s going to become retro or the cool thing to do to shoot on film, but it’s really a different process. Especially if you’re cutting your own films, there’s no Apple-Z, you can’t undo that.”
Though it is a difficult process, the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers encourages anyone who is interested to get involved and rent out a camera for $10 a day. If you just want to dip your toes in and test the waters, head down to the Plaza this weekend to check out the festival.