14-15 August, Baltic Analog Lab

By Other Means for Other Ends

Expanded cinema workshop with Ojoboca (DE)

This expanded cinema workshop is a special event before the festival that aims to teach and produce a new performance that will be performed at the opening ceremony of the festival.

In this workshop we will explore analog techniques for moving beyond the limits of the frame, the screen, and the projection space. We’ll begin by looking at the projector not as a passive device for the reproduction of coupled images and sounds but as a playable instrument. We will explore ways of transforming the quality of the light through the use of an external shutter. We’ll also consider the effects of screen placement and the use of different projection surfaces.

Then we’ll examine the use of sound and methods for incorporating noise, music and narration to live performance. We’ll look at how optical sound can be manipulated using external effect gear such as guitar pedals and synthesizers. To further interact with the mechanical properties of the machine, participants will build contact microphones to manipulate sound through touch. 

To conclude we will go over techniques in the darkroom for creating images that lend themselves to live performance. We’ll make direct positive prints from found or original footage to create loops of various lengths, which workshop participants, individually or in groups, will perform with single or multiple projectors and live sound.

18 August, 20:00 Nurme Brewery

Festival Opening

Performance with BAL and Elvijs Endelis

22 August 15.00 Baltic Analog Lab

Discussion. At the End of the World

With: Erwin van ‘t Hart (NL), Michael Higgins (IE), Juan David González Monroy (CO/DE), Anja Dornieden (DE), František Týmal (CZ), Ieva Balode (LV), Lāsma Bērtule (LV)

Moderator: Tommaso Isabella (IT/DE)

In view of the shock brought about by the pandemic, over the past year many of us have been talking a lot about the desirable end of several harmful and unjust things that probably won't leave us anytime soon. On the other hand, one good thing that has been talked about as dead for quite some time and instead is still with us, is analogue cinema. But what are its chances of survival? And under what conditions can it endure and/or mutate in an environment where digital contents and online presentations prevail? Is online streaming more an opportunity to gain a wider audience or rather a surrogate that impoverishes the works and the very idea of a festival as a communal gathering? How cinema in itself may help us bring into focus and interrogate this unsettling present? Grounded in an ethos that rests on coping with scarcity and limitations as well as on pursuing one’s own passions against the odds, the analogue film community has probably much to say about all this.

21 August 23.00 Nurme Brewery

Samopal Sound System

DJ set

After the “Process Expanded” programme on the 21st August in the yard of Nurme Brewery, Lithuanian music group “Samopal Sound System” will perform. Since 2017 they have been organizing underground music events in various uncommon places: abandoned sport stadiums, manors, tunnels, beaches and industrial buildings. The musicians use self-made amplifiers that are specially customized for the genres played by the band: electronics, dub, experimental, reggae and hip hop. Its members, Vytautas Juozenas, Matas Jurginis and Migle Kraučunaite,  make their own music and play vinyl records of works by other musicians.