Self-Portrait
"Shot in one evening in early 1972 in my bedroom, when I was still a grad student at SAIC. Shot on a borrowed Bolex and edited from one 100-ft roll of Kodachrome, which strongly emphasized reds. This started out purely as a shooting experiment. I didn't begin with a cohesive idea, and was surprised and intrigued by the footage once it was processed. The idea for the film formed from that. Having little access to equipment, I first edited the camera original by running it repeatedly through an old Ampro 16mm projector that I had gotten for free. I would stop the projector, make cuts and splices and repeat the process many times until I considered the film complete. I was lucky that the Kodachrome was durable enough and the old Ampro (actually a very good projector, and easy on film) was in good enough repair that the footage survived the process without being scratched.
I subsequently submitted the film to the 1972 Ann Arbor Film Festival and it was screened in Ann Arbor, although not selected for the tour. I was thrilled, since seeing the 1968 and 1969 Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour films had been a great influence on me as an undergraduate first starting to make films at St. Xavier University in Chicago. I also entered it in the 1972 Fellowship competition for graduating students at SAIC, since I was graduating with an MFA that year. At that time, there was no media category of work. I was astonished when one faculty member (someone I didn't even know, and who wasn't involved in film) took a stand in supporting SELF-PORTRAIT and suggested that there needed to be an avenue for media work to compete. His efforts didn't go anywhere and I didn't get a fellowship either, but the support was much appreciated." — filmmaker Barbara Scharres