Issue 00 — Spring 2025
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WARSHADFILM on why filmmakers should build their own analog studio
WARSHADFILM (Samira Guadagnuolo and Tiziano Doria) explore why working with analog film technology today is not an act of nostalgia, but a conscious and deliberate choice. Through their artistic and pedagogical practices, they examine the creative potential of technical limitations and argue that reclaiming agency over technology is both a poetic and political gesture.
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GALLERY
Why should filmmakers build their analog studio?
WF The foundation of our practice is understanding tools as extensions of intention. The “why” is everything. Technology — and technique — have always shaped language. But today, it feels more urgent. We’re working with what some would call “traditional” film technology. But we’re not using it in a traditional way.
Film has always been a highly industrial medium with a complex manufacturing infrastructure behind it. Just think of Kodak — they had an entire complex the size of a small city, cows and silver mines to produce stock. You couldn’t just make film rolls at home. It was heavy tech, expensive. Designed for military or scientific use, not for artists. Artists just adopted it, and adapted it, later.
For a long time, if you wanted to make moving images, there was no alternative. The accepted standards for how these machines were to be used in filmmaking weren’t something everyone had the resources to follow.
Today, we have an alternative — we’re using the same materials and machines, but differently. We’re taking what was rigid and industrial, and softening it. We’re building our own processing machines, repurposing discarded gear, and working without the pressure of perfection or old industry standards.
All those tools that once required huge industrial apparatuses — we’re now using with minimal infrastructure. And in doing so, we’re reclaiming agency. Ironically, if you consider how the infrastructure behind the production of digital images has evolved to such levels of complexity and interdependence, you could argue that it’s no longer digital that offers freedom — it’s analog.
And thanks to new technologies, even analog film itself is evolving. Stocks from the ’90s or early 2000s aren’t the same as today. We’re constantly re-engineering the physical medium. And whether the tool is a Bolex or an Arriflex, the fundamental question remains the same: can this help us take our research, our practice further?
Every artist, in some way, is trying to push boundaries. Using established tools in this way is not nostalgic — it’s contemporary. Because what used to be fixed is now fluid. What used to be industrial is now personal. We’re not rejecting technology — we’re just reclaiming it.
You’ve spoken about repurposing discarded tools and breaking free from rigid standards. Can you tell us about these tools, and what it means to bring them back to life?
WF Let us share a story. Fifteen years ago, we had no idea what an editing table actually looked like. One day, we saw a listing online: “Free Moviola – 16mm flatbed editor.” And we thought, “This is it. We need to get that Moviola.”
Tiziano showed up at the address, rang the bell. A woman opened the door. It was Anna Missoni — a film editor who had worked in the past for Studio Azzurro. The exchange went somewhat like this:
“Who are you?”
“I’m here for the Moviola.”
Anna glanced outside, noticed he was alone:
“Wait, you’re here by yourself?”
“Yeah, I brought the car.”
“You clearly don’t know what a Moviola is.”
“Not really.”
“Come in.”
She then showed him to the attic, and there it was: a giant machine that must’ve weighed 300 kilos. She said, “You’re not bringing that downstairs by yourself, I’m afraid.”
After a few twists and turns, we got organised and managed to get it. We learned later that this was the machine she used to edit all their films at Studio Azzurro.
We spent a year restoring it. Then we threw a huge party to celebrate. Anna had mentioned that she personally edited Facce di festa (1980) on that Moviola, so we organised a screening for the occasion, using a copy sent from Rome by Studio Azzurro. We invited them, of course.
Our venue was this totally unknown place in the outer suburbs of Milan — a tiny theater with a half-broken projector that forced Tiziano to hold the reel in his hands during the screening.
In the end, Studio Azzurro came to the party. They told us they hadn’t seen an analog projection of that film in a long time — only digitized versions. They thought watching the original was amazing, even if the print had slightly faded.
That moment taught us something.
The medium changes everything.
We’re building our own processing machines, repurposing discarded gear, and working without the pressure of perfection or old industry standards.
What about the process? How do you go from shoot to print, when working independently?WF Working within technical limitations fosters a certain intimacy with the tools. When shooting, for instance, sometimes we may only be able to do it in 100 ISO, black and white — and that’s it. We can’t shoot at night, or in low light.
Once the shoot is done, there’s a slowness to the process, a latency between what is seen when filming and what is eventually captured — and that delay creates space. It allows for a moment of mediation between reality and the final work, where imagination can unfold. With digital, you shoot and immediately see; you’re in full control. Also, it doesn’t have a negative — it’s only positive. So in a way, digital lacks mediation: this process of transformation, the possibility of reimagining the film itself. It reminds us of that quote from Robert Bresson: “Your film must resemble what you see on shutting your eyes.”
When we shoot, we don’t use any extra tools, just an eyepiece. We see the scene, we film it, and then we remember it. If we sent the rolls to an industrial lab, they would process it in two days. But we wait, we develop our rolls sometimes months or even years after shooting. And as we wait, we carry the images in our minds.
Eventually, the rolls build up, and we develop everything in one go for efficiency. By then, we’ve seen those scenes in our heads so many times. We’ve been falling asleep imagining them — a scene, a shape, the light touching a shoulder — and we could see everything so clearly. Then, when we finally see the negative, we realise it is something else.
Later on, when we start editing and arranging fragments that had no prior order, memory and reality begin to reconcile. We suddenly start seeing things that were always there in seed form, now taking shape. It gives us so much pleasure.
Some might see the wait and uncertainty as frustrating, but when the result is better than your imagination, that’s when the magic happens.
There’s a slowness to the process, a latency between what is seen when filming and what is eventually captured.
What is the significance of making films in this way?
WF Those very constraints are what make an independent practice desirable. Limitations do something important: they force attention — and that opens up space for resistance.
We, as citizens and as humans, are deeply dependent on global mechanisms we have no control over. Someone still has to produce the film stock, sure. We are not suggesting that analog technology is neutral, but using it requires us to understand our tools.
If you’re just starting out as a filmmaker, reclaiming control over your tools and images becomes a deeply meaningful act that works on multiple levels.
First, it’s a poetic gesture. Think about it this way: digital comes from order, film begins with chaos. A digital image sits on a strict grid. It’s precise — so precise that we feel the need to soften it. Millions of pixels, lined up one after the other, in an exact boxed structure. We feel the urge to break free from it, because someone else — the maker of the device — has already decided how things should be arranged.
Working with film is different. Its emulsion — the silver grains, the pigments — is distributed in an irregular way. The image, then, emerges from water. We come from water. So why shouldn’t film be born from it, too? This randomness in film is very analogous to the human condition — that’s why we feel connected to it.
Giuseppe Ungaretti once said that a poet, just by being a poet, is already making a political statement. So the second level is political. Writing poetry, like making films independently, creates the potential for your art to exist outside of an organised system of production. It stands in opposition to industry, political manipulation, and exploitative socio-economic dynamics.
Alberto Grifi said, “Cinema should not be a job.” And there’s another filmmaker we deeply admire — Djibril Diop Mambéty — who once said, “I’ll never be a professional.” That refusal — of cinema as a job, as a profession — speaks to us. It makes filmmaking a purely human act.
Besides being artists and activists, you are also educators. How do younger film students react to your message and approach?
WF Every time we lead a workshop — whether at the Accademia di Brera or in high schools — we’re struck by the students’ response. When they see the image emerge in the darkroom, when it’s finally projected, there’s this astonishment — a kind of wonder, like what audiences must’ve felt watching the Lumière films for the first time. It’s a childlike thrill, a real sense of discovery.
And these are all digital natives. What we’ve noticed is that they’re not just drawn to the image — they’re drawn to the process. The absence of touch in digital workflows is something they clearly feel. So they truly enjoy that hands-on engagement, the intimacy with tools and materials.
What they’re really experiencing is something beyond learning a technique — it is collaboration and community. They make a shared film, piece by piece: two meters here, three meters there. They self-organize, make decisions together, move in and out of the darkroom making sure they don’t damage the reel. And somehow it always works. Because they rely on each other. They see their work projected alongside their classmates’, and they start to value that exchange, that “contamination” of ideas.
Building communities is very important, it’s what connects our work as educators to our practice. It is another political act. And it allows us to not look back — but to reimagine forward.