The Putnam Theater hosted Steve Cossman, founder and executive director of non-profit cinema arts organization Mono No Aware, Oct. 12 for a presentation about his work and a screening of 16 mm film.
Throughout the presentation, Cossman recounted stories from the past 17 years over which Mono No Aware has existed. These stories, accompanied by a series of photographs displayed on the theater’s screen projector, ranged from refurbishing analog film equipment sourced from all over the country to hosting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Mono No Aware commissions filmmakers, providing them with materials and funding to make their projects, according to Cossman. He said one of his goals when hosting an event is to meet people and encourage them to get involved as a student and potentially later an instructor for the courses Mono No Aware offers. The organization has over 2000 students, according to Professor Taylor Dunne.
The screening featured the whirring of the film projector as a collection of short films produced by Mono No Aware collaborators were cast to the screen. Cossman showed a mix of animation and live-action projects across a range of tones and themes.
“I’m hoping [students] get excited about the creative potential of using analog film,” said Dunne.
First-year Heather Gibb attended the event and said, “It was pretty cool. Admittedly, I don’t know that much about 16 mm [film], but it was definitely cool to go and watch the movies. I definitely want to learn more about it after seeing that.”
During the presentation, Cossman compared the current popularity of film to the revival of vinyl records and told the audience his own reasons for preferring the analog medium. He said the prevalence of digital media has led to many projects’ aesthetic looking identical.
“It doesn’t look good, and you can’t migrate the media into the next iteration and so it doesn’t have an extended life… People are realizing with film, it has this life,” said Cossman. He said he imagined his kids putting together a retrospective of his work and having the ability to scan the film at a high resolution for better preservation.
Cossman has visited the school before, according to Dunne. She and Cossman met in the New York experimental film scene.
During this most recent visit to Keene, Cossman hosted both the film screening and a contact printing workshop where students were able to develop their own film using a mixture of coffee and beer.
Prior to the presentation’s start, Cossman opened a table that displayed books about film as well as past event promotional material. Attendees could buy the books from Cossman with money or through Venmo; the flyers were free to take.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
