One afternoon two years ago, Eric Fleischauer, a filmmaker, and Jason Lazarus, a photographer, met for coffee. Gradually the conversation turned to one of their shared obsessions: GIFs, the infinitely looping minimovies ubiquitous on the Internet. Given their jobs, they were particularly interested in where GIFs came from and what they were becoming.
“The file format starts to be a blender of culture,” Lazarus adds.
Some groupings made sense—cats, pizza—but others required more consideration. The filmmakers were still adding and rearranging GIFs as recently as two weeks ago.
Originally, Fleischauer and Lazarus had hoped to record Twohundredfiftysixcolors on celluloid, to connect it more explicitly with the history of cinema and to be able to store it in a more stable, off-line medium. But that proved too costly, so Twohundredfiftysixcolors exists only on videotape—for now. The filmmakers are still scheming to transfer it to 16-millimeter.
Directed by Eric Fleischauer and Jason Lazarus, who’ll be present at the premiere.
Thu 4/18, 6 PM,
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State,siskelfilmcenter.org,
312-846-2800,
$11.
