Issue 00 — Spring 2025
/9
Sarah Brahim on holding the world with a Bolex
From childhood music videos to major
biennial commissions, Sarah traces a personal
cartography of movements, images and
technologies that have shaped her practice.
She reflects on the relationship between her
body, the camera, and the subjects of her
films. And invites us to remember what it
means to hold images — truly hold them
— when the world asks us to forget them —
and to replace what was never broken.
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GALLERY
How has your movement practice shaped the way you approach filmmaking?
SB Until last week, I didn’t even own a motion picture camera of my own. Scarcity in some form has shaped my practice. So I learned to work with as little as possible.
My first language isn’t even verbal — it’s movement. Since I was three, alone in dance studios, it was through responding to space that I learned to understand the world. Twenty- five years of that, and it’s impossible for me to separate how I frame an image from how I experience the passing of time. The tools I use, like the Bolex, need to echo my body’s own rhythms.
My movement practice informs the way I relate to the camera itself — not only during filming, but also in editing. Physical tasks I use in performance settings often shape how I hold the camera, how I breathe with it. When I film, I often set goals that are physical or time-based. I try to create situations where my subjects experience something real — and, within a safe environment, have the space not just to attempt those tasks, but to reach beyond them and extend themselves.
The elements of traditional theatres of my childhood always fascinated me; the backstage, movable sets, how light and sound could change everything, including perception of time. Now I am drawn to those elements which ask us to listen, pay close attention, and that create wonder within the reality of the everyday.
But really, the first camera I learned on was my phone. I was maybe fourteen when I started making videos with it. A Motorola flip phone shaped like a pebble. I made a music video on it with my best friend Jes, on the side of a road, to Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz. I remember flashes, pixelated colors. We were so proud.
Time is the real gift of a phone camera. As soon as I could, I started using my phone to shoot, to improvise, to experiment for hours. I’d lock the focus, lock the light, step inside, and dance. Then I’d edit on the bus. Hours of rehearsal footage turned into archives I would go back to later on.
I’d walk around all the time filming myself, framing light. I didn’t know I was learning. And more than that, I was feeling the tool as an extension of my body. That’s something I still believe: every technology we invent is just that — an extension of our senses.
This is true also of the Bolex. It is almost like an external organ. It is demanding. Not in terms of how difficult it is to use it, but in terms of presence. I hold it deliberately, wait with it and feel its weight.
It’s impossible for me to separate
how I frame an image from how I feel
time passing.
What does it mean to make films with a Bolex today? Are you responding to other contemporary forms of imagemaking?
SB The Bolex just offers a different kind of time. One frame, three seconds, a single take. You wait for the wind to rise in the desert, for the moment to get it right. For someone like me working with structured improvisation, that kind of limit is a gift.
Also, something happens to people when they see it. If I set up with a digital camera, people get nervous. They ask questions. They feel watched. But with the Bolex — people want to be seen by it. It’s like going back to the art of portraiture.
Being filmed becomes a kind of offering, like they’re special enough for that moment to be held. There’s a grace in the design, it just changes the atmosphere and the energy around you. Suddenly, no one’s rushing you out of whichever space you’re filming in. It’s as if the object itself was magic.
The tools I use, like the Bolex,
need to echo my body’s own rhythms.
Something about the seamlessness of today’s tools, especially in consumer technology, is uncanny. A camera phone was meant to be very convenient, but at times it may be perceived as threatening.
SB Absolutely. And I hate that we’ve accepted a defi nition of technology that constantly renders the previous version obsolete. We’ve forgott en the richness, the language, the possibilities of each tool we used in the past and then — somehow — replaced. Some of these, like the Bolex, were designed with intention. They still exist because they were built to last.
Different tools can teach you how to see. A Pentax K1000, for instance — it has a built-in light meter. Just a needle, between two bars. If you’re low, or if you’re too high, you adjust. The camera itself teaches you how to understand exposure and light. And so over time you learn how to sense light.
Or think about analog film projectors. They didn’t just deliver an image — they performed it. Light, flickers, rhythms — you could feel the film moving through the machine. There was animation, sound. There was life.
Honestly, now I don’t even know how digital projectors truly work. I press a button and pray. There’s no intimacy there, no knowledge. You’re dependent on invisible systems. And when something breaks, it’s so expensive to fix that we’re encouraged to throw it away. These tools are designed to be replaced.
Culturally, what does that mean? We’ve progressed in efficiency, but not in magic.
We’ve forgotten the richness, the language, the possibilities of
each tool we used in the past and then — somehow — replaced.
Has working in analog filmmaking changed the way you archive your work or preserve your tools?
SB My hard drive holds my life’s work, and all it would take is a water spill for it to vanish. With film, if that happens, I can dry it. And even if it’s damaged, something remains. It can still speak.
That’s why I’ve started printing my work onto film. If I think something matters, I make a copy. Because I can’t even be sure my digital memory will last four years before it corrupts. Archiving is more than just storing, though. Holding a moment — really holding it — is a powerful act. So why can we not have more than one way to do that?
My Bolex still exists because someone decided to protect it. There’s this sort of underground network — labs, collectives, artist-run spaces — people holding down analog practices not just for themselves, but for others.
They’re teaching fifteen-year-olds how to develop film. I have friends running labs like Worm in Rotterdam and Mono No Aware in New York, keeping these machines alive — repairing, rebuilding, making sure there are chemicals and scanners.
It’s a whole ecology built on care. And it matters. Sometimes we forget that analog isn’t just an aesthetic. It’s relational. It requires time, touch, a different way of making.
We’ve progressed in efficiency,
but not in magic.
How are you carrying forward this new way of making images in your practice?
SB These tools have deeply aff ected how I relate to my work, and to others. How you record something changes your relationship with what — or who — you are recording. It changes how you treat them.
So yes — let’s give analog cameras to more people. To women. To kids. To anyone who’s never been told that these tools can be theirs. That’s what happened to my father, actually. When he was young, in his village in Hail, Saudi Arabia, cameras were given out to him and the other children — simple ones, nothing fancy. Later, while studying archaeology, he received another. He still owns one of those. And the generosity that made it possible stayed with him.
I think about that all the time. How long something can last — not just physically, but culturally — if someone chooses to hold it.