16mm Metal Film Can

von Franziska Kohler

This metal film can containing a 16mm film reel was found in the depths of the archive of the Goethe University’s film department. Its origin? Uncertain. The many stickers pasted on top of each other can hardly be deciphered anymore. They are tattered and torn off, the handwritten inscription is barely legible. The stickers tell a story of a can well used, a can that has stored different film reels over time. Right now it contains a short educational film about ichneumon flies and European beewolves. It’s an old black-and-white copy, dusty and moldy. The material sports spots of discoloration and when watched at the editing table it makes a sort of flapping noise; the material sticks to the rollers.

Franziska Kohler wrote this object text in June 2023 for a pop-up exhibition within the conference "Sticky Films". The conference was organised by members of the PhD program Configurations of Film, and took Sara Ahmed's notion of 'stickiness' as a point of departure to discuss histories, theories and technologies of film-making.