Handmade, camera-original 16mm films from Leopoldo Bloom

Approximate running time: 40 minutes

The Portland Movie. 2001, 16mm color, silent, 8 minutes. A collaborative epistolary film shot and edited by Susannah Slocum. When my friend Susannah relocated from New York City to Portland, Oregon in early 2000, I started an intimate long-distance collaboration. Working at a film lab in NYC, I would mail letters containing rolls of unexposed 16mm film to Susannah, who would shoot her new Pacific Northwest landscape and return the footage. I would then process the film at work, screening the results during my lunch breaks before mailing back both the processed film and written responses. This extended correspondence through cinema culminated when I visited Portland that summer, where we completed the film together, transforming our epistolary exchange into a shared document of our daily life.

Grieg Farm, Red Hook, NY. 1997, 16mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 9 minutes.
A landscape film of the disappearing farms in New York's Hudson Valley.

Shooting Grieg Farm. 1997, 16mm color, hand processed, silent, 3 minutes.
A behind-the-scenes glimpse at the process of filming Grieg Farm, Red Hook, NY. This camera roll was shot by Susannah Slocum.

August 1997, Greenpoint, NY. 1998, 16mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 8 minutes. Shot on location on Kent Avenue, on the Greenpoint waterfront, before the area was revitalized into unaffordable housing and boutiques, this hand-processed film is a wistful meditation on the obsolescence of the urban industrial landscapes that occupied the outskirts of most neighborhoods in New York City.

Prelude to Gantry Plaza State Park, Long Island City. 1997, 16mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 4 minutes. A few camera tests shot in the subway and on the waterfront of Long Island City before the area was redeveloped into high-rise apartments.

Junior, my German Shepherd mutt. 1998, 16mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 3 minutes. A camera roll of my long-lost first dog, Junior.

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Leopoldo Bloom is an author and experimental filmmaker who self-publishes his writings in limited-edition artist books. His debut memoir, How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day, now resides in over two dozen special collections and museums worldwide. His latest work, The Migratory Patterns of North American Queers at the Turn of the Century, repurposes the family photo album format to reframe queer lives through migration rather than traditional milestones of birth and marriage. Since the 1990s, Leopoldo has worked with 35mm film, manipulating photographic emulsion with alternative chemistry and bipackprinting techniques. The Big Film Series represents his foray into expanded cinema performance, where he shot and projected film portraits using original hand-cranked equipment from cinema's earliest era.