Sophie Watzlawick, Sans Lune mit Präludium (2017)

Sophie Watzlawick is a Berlin-based artist and analogue filmmaker whose work adopts a speculative approach to the moving image, exploring how film can evoke philosophical and poetic concepts. Her hand-crafted films frequently investigate the liminal space between the tangible and the oneiric, the visible and the unseen, rendering both rigid societal structures alongside a more human, experiential dimension. She is a co-founder and active member of LaborBerlin, an artist film lab that provides a collaborative and experimental space for analogue film practice. Sans Lune mit Präludium is a 16mm black-and-white experimental film that merges a range of analogue techniques, including double exposure and the manipulation of both positive and negative film stock. The work delves into the materiality of film itself, exploring the concept of the latent image and the possibility of a new filmic language that is not yet fully formed.

Viewer’s notes: we advise the audience to watch Sans Lune mit Präludium with headphones as the film begins with a four minute sound piece.

^{Sophie Watzlawick, Sans Lune mit Präludium, 2017, 16mm film, 12 min}

BS: (Blue Screen) How did you first start making films, and what drew you to the medium?

SW: (Sophie Watzlawick) I came from photography. I think I was always very interested in cinema – as a kind of parallel world that doesn’t exist in reality. Since I was a child, and also as a teenager, we often went to Paris to see films. This stayed with me. But what led me to start making films was this desire for something to happen within the image. I was working a lot with still photography, and then I started experimenting – creating images with sound, using photography like storyboards. At some point, I felt I could expand this way of working and began working with moving images. So the shift to film came from this urge to go beyond the still image.

BS: What was your first experience like working with film?

SW: The first film I made was in Super 8, but it wasn’t easy. It was hard for me to understand where and how I would find the material. At the time, I was not surrounded by people who knew how to do it. So it was a long process of researching: where to find film, whether it could still be developed, what the costs were. Through this, I learned of the artist lab scene, where you can develop film yourself, so it was less expensive. So it was from the beginning that I came to this analogue film world.

BS: It is interesting that you mention that you come from photography, as your films seem to oscillate between the still and moving image, and also the link with early cinema – this moment when the still image became the moving image. How do you relate to photography today in your practice?

SW: I think what interests me most is the trick of the moving image – I’m really touched that what you’re really seeing is a series of still images and your mind makes them move. But every single photogram can still hide something. There’s always something just behind the image, and that tension is really powerful for me. I never found that in digital film in the same way. I also work very intuitively, in communication with the material. It’s like the material says to me, ‘What do you think of this?’ and I respond. So there’s a sense of collaboration with the film itself, something that I don’t hold complete control over.

BS: Besides this, in your work there is an interplay between text and image, and text and sound. Can you talk about these three elements of filmmaking that are prominent in your practice and how you work with them?

SW: I am really interested in poetry, and the idea of something that is not attached to time. I usually begin with a strong, abstract feeling – something emotional or philosophical. From there, I read a lot, follow my intuition and collect images, sounds and words. I rarely know in advance what I’ll film or what the final film will look like. It’s like catching a dream: the more I try to go closer to it, the more it disappears. I start from this feeling, from this intuition. Sound often comes later, and often feels heavy when I first place it with the image. I try to put the sound with the images in a way that they dance together, and then with the words. A lot happens in the editing process and it is a big part of my work.

BS: The idea of poetry feels really present in your work. Not just in that you sometimes cite literary sources in your films, but also in your editing style, where, like poetry, meaning often seems to lie between words. Or in your case, between images, or between the image, sound and text.

SW: When the film goes into the world, it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s really important for me to not say how people should think or perceive my work, but that they feel really free to connect with it – if they do connect with it! That they can have their own metaphors, their own references, their own interpretations, and for this you need to have these gaps and ambiguities.

BS: You’re closely involved in the analogue film lab scene, especially in Berlin, where you live and co-founded LaborBerlin. What does that community mean for your practice?

SW: I first arrived in the lab scene for economic reasons – I simply couldn’t afford professional labs. But working in a darkroom, you start to discover so much about the material. I had started working in a lab in Geneva (Zebra Lab), and then when I arrived in Berlin 20 years ago, I was sure there would be a lab there. But there were just individuals working together developing film in one bathroom or another. With a group of people we found a place and formed what became LaborBerlin. It was interesting in Berlin, as a lot of us were coming from somewhere else, speaking different versions of German, but trying to build something together around analogue film.

An equipped analog film lab is too heavy for one person – it needs machines, shared knowledge and collectivity. These labs are not only about access, but about proposing a different way of making films – a different way of going into the world and working collectively through shared resources and with a flat hierarchy. There’s also something quite radical and philosophical in that.

BS: Let’s talk about your film Sans Lune mit Präludium. What is it about, and how did it evolve over time?

SW: This film really reflects entering this lab community and also entering an experimental way of working with analogue film. Sans Lune mit Präludium took about eight years to make – not of constant work, but the film is formed of images shot over eight years. I started the project before LaborBerlin existed, and I developed it alongside building that lab. It was also my first film that felt truly experimental. I explored how deeply I could work with the image – through chemistry, contact prints, layering, abstraction. Thematically, it’s about the tension between rigid social structures and the human experience, and also about a broader sense of being – not just as a human, but as part of the cosmos, of nature.

In the title, ‘sans lune’ – ’without moon’ — refers to this idea of the latent image. The moon is there, even when we don’t see it. That space between presence and absence is important to me – what we believe in but can’t yet see, such as when it’s a dark moon. The film plays with this idea: you have where you are, what you see and what’s happening, but there’s also what is not there and what you can’t see, or what is there but you can’t catch.

In more practical terms, for Sans Lune mit Präludium, I worked with both positive and negative film. I don’t see one as more ‘true’ than the other – it’s not that positive is right, and negative is wrong. They’re simply different ways of seeing. For me, it’s a way to explore night and day, black and white, the visible and the unseen, but also to question what an image is, and what it can become.