EP.17 - Esther Urlus

We met Rotterdam based artist Esther Urlus when she was in Scotland attending the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in 2019.  Esther was here to present a talk at the filmmakers symposium entitled ‘Accidental Results’ in the context of the overarching festival theme of ‘embrace the strange’. 

“New discoveries often arise from accidental results, thus my artistic film path features a walk from exploiting the one accident that lead to new accidents. Luckily, photochemical film gives the opportunity to make many mistakes and therefore dive deeply into accidental results. Although for me personally, the real fun only starts when making them in a controlled and staged way.”

As part of her presentation Esther talked about her work ‘Konrad & Kurfurst’, and her experiments in producing the home brew gelatine emulsion she used in this project.  You can hear more on this in our interview as well as her work in the Rotterdam artists-run workspace Filmwerkplaats, the importance of sharing within a filmmakers community and her DIY and pioneering approach to analogue filmmaking.   In the interview reference is made to the Artist-run film lab makers manual REMI - Re-Engineering the Moving Image, you can find more information on this publication here. 

Images below - The Oxberry Optical Printer donated by a special effects company in London, still from 'Study for Battle' premiered at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Esther presenting her talk at the Filmmakers Symposium, and our well-thumbed copy of the artist-run film lab makers manual.