Film Negativo / Positivo

Federica Foglia / Canada, Italy / 2023 / 14′ / Silent

Negative/Positive Film is a handmade collage composed of layers of old 16mm erotic films from the 1940s and 1970s interwoven with nature documentaries and layers of organic materials. This visual abstraction fuses both positive film and its negative counterpart-on the same polyester base. Negative and Positive co-present allow the film to exist in two versions, one positive version precisely, the other negative. The artist uses the emulsion grafting technique, also known as emulsion lifting in other variations. The film is presented as an abstract repair of female bodies dislocated from their original erotic content and ripped away from their male co-stars. The figure of man is cut out of the image, the female body slowly merges with the body of insects and flowers at the intersection of eco-criticism, decorative art, animation, and sculpture; this film fuses organic materials together with celluloid emulsion, first liquefied then re-solidified to produce an allegory of inter-species femininity.

Editing Federica Foglia
Sound KlankBleeld, Satie201,Chris Reierson, Federica Foglia, KOOPS, Craig Smith, BugInTheSYS, The VeoMammoth11, Yle Arkisto, TRP, kb7clx Heigh-Hoo, Alessio Gogeri, Tomchik Rec, WaveplaySFX, Ake Hodell, Pooleside

Federica Foglia
Federica Foglia is a visual artist working between Canada and Italy. After earning a BA in Art History, Theater and Cinema from University l’Orientale in Naples, she moved to Toronto where she continued her studies and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University, where she is currently a doctoral candidate in Cinema & Media Studies. She is interested in issues of immigration, identity, women of the diaspora, migrant temporalities and seeking an aesthetic language to investigate these experiences. Her practice is within the context of materialist experimental cinema with a particular inclination toward tactile, recycled, amateur, camera-less cinema. Throughout her career she has collaborated with artists such as director Deepa Mehta (Water), filmmaker and activist John Greyson (Lilies) and experimental filmmaker Philip Hoffman (What These Ashes Wanted). She is currently working on a project to develop analog and eco-friendly emulsion lifting techniques with orphaned 16mm films from private collections and family archives.