THE UNTHINKABLE OPERATION: FILMING WITHOUT LIGHT – "EOGHAN NEFF & ANXO LORENZO UNIT SUPER-8MM"

Some things are, quite frankly, unthinkable.

It is unthinkable to film with a movie system that its own creator, the Japanese Fujifilm, abandoned in 2013.
It is unthinkable to shoot on film under dim lighting conditions.
It is unthinkable to develop spliced-together footage from scraps left over from a previous project.

And yet, my friends, the unthinkable became reality to immortalize the concert of Eoghan Neff & Anxo Lorenzo in Ferrol (Galicia, NW of Spain.

Super-8 frame

A Race Against Time

I found out about the concert that very morning. With no time to get fresh film stock and load it into cartridges, Álex and me improvised in the IB Cinema darkroom. We reloaded Single-8 cartridges using leftover footage from a previous project—a format that Fujifilm sacrificed in the 2013 photochemical collapse, but which still lives on in my hands:

• Two cartridges with less than 10 meters each of Kodak Vision 500 negative film.
• One cartridge with less than 5 meters of Kodak Tri-X black-and-white film.
• 35mm photographs with Ilford 400.

Teatro Jofre in Ferrol (Galicia, NW of Spain)

Filming in the Shadows of Ferrol´s Teatro Jofre

Photochemical cinema is light-sensitive material. So how do you properly expose film when there is barely any light?

For that, I turned to my trusted companions—two cameras, both over 40 years old:

• ZC1000N, my ally from the desert to the Arctic and Antarctica.
• P2, modified to my specifications by my good friend Mateu Bauzá.

Even though both lenses open only to f/1.8, they share a unique feature: light reaches the film directly, without losing a stop to prisms or semi-mirrors. Additional techniques (which I only share with Álex) allowed me to gain another stop and a half.

Ilford 35 mm film negative

For the P2, I adapted a Voigtländer wide-angle lens and shot in Tri-X black and white.

For the ZC1000N, I reserved the two cartridges of Kodak Vision 500, capturing color with the organic texture I sought—no need for those crude digital post-production effects I despise.

Eoghan Neff in Super-8

The Challenge of Developing

Filming was only half the battle. Developing a negative with splices is a nightmare for labs—if the splices come undone, the damage is irreversible.

I contacted several labs across Europe, and all refused the job—except for one in Scandinavia. I sent the package, hoping they would work a miracle.

But luck was not on my side. The lab shut down during transit, leaving my package stranded, nearly lost. After a series of negotiations, I finally managed to get it back.

By then, thanks to the Sellier Film Festival, I already had a JoBo CPP Classic processor in La Coruña. Álex and me took on the challenge: developing spliced negatives. Against all odds, everything went smoothly. The splices held—thanks to Fujifilm adhesive tape. (Sorry, Mr. Trump, but 3M tape doesn’t survive the chemicals...).

Anxo in Super-8

A Musical Clip for Galician History

From one day to the next, the impossible became reality. This musical clip, featuring two exceptional bagpipers—one of whom I have admired for years and consider one of Galicia’s greatest cultural ambassadors—was finally published on Vimeo, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

Fun fact: St. Patrick’s sister, St. Darerca, was born in Galicia.

Because the unthinkable sometimes just needs someone stubborn enough to make it happen.

🔴 WATCH AND LISTEN to "EOGHAN NEFF & ANXO LORENZO UNIT SUPER-8MM" on the next screen: