ERiN NEiTZEL

[ night • zel ]
analog/video production + projection

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EVENTS

Weightless (2024) Super 8mm, iPhone footage, digital file, 04:35

An alchemical experiment in media, blending analog, digital, and 3D rendered materials, Weightless is about the transmutation of object form into image, and the varying signifiers imbued in different textural qualities of image making. Would a rose in any other medium smell as sweet? This project was inspired by my experience teaching myself the software Touchdesigner, which is a nice tool for working with 3D objects and generative video, but whose interface is so very different than an analog workflow or even the non-linear video editing softwares I grew up with. One of my professors once talked to me about the first time he tried digital editing after years of editing on film, and he said “How on Earth do you decide what to do when you could do anything?” This film is for David Gatten, as a test in doing a bit of everything.

Unseen Motion Picture (2024) Collection of 35mm slide film

For the past 7 years of my life I have worked as a projectionist in theaters across the country, and during that time have handled a lot of 35mm film prints. Each print has a length of head and tail leader that are used to thread the projector, and they also contain vital information for projectionists such as the aspect ratio, sound type, and other notes. The metadata of a film print. The bits of ephemera one finds in the leader can be such an intimate reminder of where the film has been, notes from lab technicians where it has been printed, leader that has been spliced on and off and used again by another projectionist whose name you’ll never know at a theater who knows where. I have harvested these pieces that I find meaningful as ethically as I can, trying to stick to only fraying scraps or discarded frames spliced out and thrown away. Sometimes sitting up in the booth in the dark can be a very lonely trade, and these small pieces of connection can be so strikingly tender that I want to share them with everybody.

Seance for Harry Smith (2024) Mini DV, digital file, 07:05

WATCH HERE

Throughout the more tumultuous periods of my life, Anthology Film Archives has been a place of both inspiring and grounding energy, it is a place that has brought me in contact with some of the most meaningful people and films I have had the pleasure to know. Many have described Anthology as a temple, and among the people who have sanctified it as such was filmmaker and ethnographer Harry Smith. Although Smith died 5 years before I was born, I later found out that our paths intersected at 2 points: either in the theater at Anthology or on the streets of Boulder, Colorado where I grew up and where he taught for many years at Naropa University. The mysterious intersections of connection and geography weave patterns between people all over the world. This film depicts a ritual in Harry’s honor, filmed at Anthology, in which he possesses my camera. Seance for Harry Smith premiered at Film Diary NYC in 2024.

Memory Palace (2023) Mini DV, digital file 02:37

memory:tape::forgot:degraded

WATCH HERE

On The Air (2019), digital file, 10:51

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Electra Complex (2018), digital file, 15:13

WATCH HERE