The Projector | South Korea’s Super 8 ‘film lab’ Space Cell wants to revive analogue filmmaking

Stepping into Space Cell is like travel­ling back in time. Tucked away in a converted ground-floor flat in Samcheong-dong, a quiet neighbour­hood on the northern outskirts of South Korea’s capital, Seoul, this “handmade-film lab” is filled with equipment very much at odds with the digital age.

The main space doubles as a screening room and is filled with Super 8 and 16mm film projectors. What was once a kitchen is now a makeshift dark room, its walls lined with sinks and bottles of chemicals nece­ssary for processing film stock. A back room is dominated by two contrap­tions – one for animations, the other a contact printer – seemingly past their prime.

After giving me a tour of the premises and the lowdown on its rudimentary faci­lities, filmmaker Cho Inhan smiles when I ask how he and his colleagues salvaged all these artefacts. Some equip­ment was bought second-hand, he says, while other pieces were donated or acquired from labs that had ceased operations.

“We collected them from different places, piece by piece, and put them back together ourselves,” says Cho, who, in March last year, took over as Space Cell’s director from its founder, veteran experi­mental filmmaker Lee Jang-wook.

“We try to keep certain amounts of basic equipment, such as 16mm Bolex cameras, projectors and other supplies, for annual workshops,” he adds. “The maintenance is important but tricky since it is very hard to find a technician who can fix such items.”

Cho and his Space Cell collective, made up of seven or eight independent film­makers, conduct and promote analogue film­making on old-fashioned film stock. The day I visit, the team is preparing for a screening of 8mm and Super 8 films it has collected over the years. Cho plans to organise five screenings like this every month.