The “Alchemist Laboratory with Filmmaker Gaëlle Rouard” workshop focusing on the flat print filmmaking technique guided by the renowned French experimental filmmaker Gaëlle Rouard took place on 18 and 19 October 2024 in cooperation with Labodoble, Prague’s art film laboratory. Participants got to know the creative potential of the flat print film process and manipulating and transforming the original image on film. They learned about the potential for interventions in the development process and their effect on the aesthetic rendering of the image. The workshop was intended for filmmakers and film teachers and students interested in experimental techniques. Analogue photography and film have been making their return for the past two decades, only this time not in terms of photography and film industry as much as an art technique that allows direct contact with the material. The workshop aimed to show those interested playful forms of photochemical manipulation and its potential for their own work. Gaëlle Rouard was a guest of the AV Seminar organised by CAS in the reference screening room of the FAMU Studio.

Gaëlle Rouard is French filmmaker, alchemist and performer. Since the early 1990s, she has been creating handmade films with a focus on the film laboratory in a non-industrial setting. She is a long-time member of Le 102, rue d’Alembert, a place that focuses on creating and promoting experimental music and film. Rouard headed the Atelier MTK film lab in Grenoble for 12 years (until 2006). The lab focuses on do-it-yourself approaches and has been instrumental in the rise of a network of artist-run film labs that represent the current experimental material film scene. Rouard develops and explores diverse methods of chemical film treatment, sharing her experience through workshops in various contexts from art schools to individual teaching. Performing around the world, she experiments with the possibilities of live multi-projection, both in collaboration with various people and in solo acts. Her works have been screened all over the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Rotterdam IFF, the Syros International Film Festival, the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane and in many other venues.