Passing through the Saint-Martin Gate in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris and walking 200 meters north, you’ll find a small shop on the west side of the road displaying DVDs, books, and film cameras. Surrounded by the imagery of cinematic lenses and film sprockets, the name “RE:VOIR” stands out clearly. This is a label dedicated to promoting and distributing experimental cinema through the medium of film. It was founded in 1994 by experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov and has now reached its 30th anniversary.

« AIMEZ-VOUS LE CINÉMA EXPÉRIMENTAL ? » (Do you like experimental cinema?) — Pip Chodorov’s documentary Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film answers the question posed by the name of the shop. The film features interviews with many pioneers of experimental cinema from the first half of the 20th century. These individuals, often little known and leading modest, low-profile lives, leave a profound impression with their radical experimentation and unwavering exploration of film as a medium.

The early 20th century was an era of burgeoning avant-garde art. Advances in technology, the spread of new ideas, and the birth of new nations imbued 1920s Europe with a youthful vitality. Inspired by a passion for change, a reverence for machinery, and a belief in art, experimental filmmakers sought to rationalize what was once considered irrational, under the influence of avant-garde art. Born in such a context, experimental cinema emerged as a rebellion against “anemic films.” These works employed innovative technologies and cinematic languages with abandon, actively integrating other art forms such as dance, performance, and painting, thereby forging new possibilities for visual storytelling and expression in cinema.

I interviewed Pip at a café near RE:VOIR. During the interview and while organizing the transcript, I was repeatedly moved by the passion and vitality that Pip and other experimental filmmakers bring to their craft. To them, experimental cinema is as free and pure as poetry. To attempt to interpret experimental cinema with words or encapsulate the richness of the individual through language is akin to trying to tame an Andalusian Dog.

Experimental cinema is, by its very nature, a rebellion against rules. To anchor experimental cinema in words is like trying to trap the moon within the frame of your fingers. Perhaps we can never reach the moon like Georges Méliès once imagined, but through words, we might still catch a fleeting glimpse of moonlight.

ACCE: How did you begin and continue to work in the field of experimental cinema?

Chodorov: In college, I studied cognitive science but I still made films. It wasn’t until after leaving college and working for a year in film distribution, I knew that I wanted to study in Paris for film theory. And when I got to think about studying that, I felt I could combine my interest in psychology and linguistics, with film.

When I was studying film theory in Paris, in the meantime, I was making my films, which were in fact experimental. I didn’t really think about it, but they were. And then, when I finally got invited to join the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, I realized that all these filmmakers were experimental filmmakers. And I thought, if that’s where I am, I should make better experimental films. I should forget about trying to tell stories and really think how to make a good experimental film.

ACCE: Speaking that from America to France, around the World War II, many European filmmakers went to America. They made friends, collaborated, and created their own films, forming a strong community like the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. But you chose from America to France, why did you make this choice?

Chodorov: I was interested in studying film theory. And in the 80s’ America, there wasn’t a very good program for film theory. It was more about film analysis. It will teach: if a camera angle tilts up at characters, it makes them look scary, which is boring to me.

I was excited that in the classes in Paris, we never even watched films, we just talked about the ideas of applying linguistics to film or have theoretical, more abstract and not practical at all.

And also, I was excited about living in another country. I grew to feel that I was more comfortable in Europe. I feel like the conversations I was having with people are deeper than in America. Although at first, it was difficult to meet people in person as French people are a little closed. But after a couple of years, when I started to make friends, they became good friends. Then I realized that relationship is stronger here. In America, everyone is busy working and may not seeing a friend for 10 months. But in France, a friend might said to me we haven’t seen each other for 2 weeks. Let’s have a glass of wine!

Living in France was more interesting and rewarding. After seeing a movie in America, you just go out, eat and talk about your life. But here, you talk about the movie. In France, film is taken very seriously, as an industry, but also as an art form more than most countries.In the late 1980s, when I came to Paris, someone told me that during their childhood in a small village, a bus would come weekly to bring films to the village square for screenings. So you can get the real education about film living here which you cannot get the same in other countries.

After a while of working and programming films here, I realized I knew a lot of films that they didn’t know, that I could bring them here. I had ideas from America that I could apply here, like publishing videos, which exists in America, but not here. So for me, this is going to come here with or without me. Let’s do it.

ACCE: You have been working on experimental films and its publishing for many years. For you ,what is its definition?

Chodorov: Basically, experimental films are films that are not telling the story and not showing reality. So they are not documentary or fiction. But of course, any rule can be broken, especially by experimental filmmakers. So this definition can also be broken.

But in general, if you were to think of narrative films as novels, you could see experimental films as poems. It’s the visual impressions of the world or of the interior mind, or it’s something more formal experimentation, like with the actual material. It’s exploration and also has to do with making art, but not in a pretentious way. You don’t make an experimental film so that you can get into the museum, but because you want to see what you can do with the material. You can’t read a poem like way you read a novel which would be discouraging to try. You don’t need to trying to figure out, but just let it wash over you.

Once, we showed Stan Brakhage’s film Dog Star Man in an open-air theater with no roof, where the walls were worn down by wind and rain. Two elderly ladies from the neighborhood came to watch the screening. After the film ended, they remained seated, so I went over to ask them how they felt. They said, “We didn’t understand the film, but the theater’s walls are so beautiful.” Experimental films opened their eyes to seeing things new, a new perception of the world around them.

ACCE: We do can see some narrative or its fragments in experimental films. So how do you think the relationship between creating narrative films and experimental films?

Chodorov: You can’t really generalize. Everything can tell a story, even a red dot on the white screen can tell a story.

And every narrative film is also a documentary of the film being shot. The actors, the sets, it’s a document of the moment when they filmed that movie, even though it’s telling a story. But there are variations between trying to make you believe in a fictional world, and trying to make you forget everything but just the actual physicality of the screen.

One thing you can play with when you’re experimenting with film is you can play with stories, and characters. And you can set up situations where people start to believe in a story, and then it breaks down. Or suddenly the image can go black, and the voiceover can talk to the spectators. And all of a sudden you’re confronted with yourself in the theater. All kinds of things all possibilities. It’s free. Bur of course, the more free you are, the more difficult it is to have an idea and to make something strong. But if you’re making a narrative film, you have a framework. within that framework, you could have crazy ideas. But if there’s no framework at all, anything goes then you have to start from scratch.

Something else about experimental film is the community. Experimental filmmakers identify with their community, which is grassrotts. So we grew up together, and gradually we have agencies and labs by our own. Like at RE:VOIE, we’re all filmmakers, and we help filmmakers. It’s very natural and organic process for us. For example, Jonas started the group that distributes my films in New York. And I distributes Jonas‘ films in Paris.

If a Hollywood famous filmmaker now makes experimental films, he’s out of the league of experimental filmmaking. He’s not in our community. He doesn’t need us to get distribution or lab. He doesn’t need the cooperative. Whether or not he makes experimental or narrative. And he’d have an audience.

Film industry is really an industry where you sell tickets. And the art world is an industry where you sell objects. Even in a movie theater, experimental films don’t sell enough tickets. In this case, it’s like in the no man’s land between these two industries, and there really is no place. But it’s also a way of being free because you’re not tied to an industry and there is no power or money dynamic. Everything’s available to you, you can make a film, you can shoot and develop your film. If you can’t afford the lab, you just develop it by coffee or something else. There are always people figuring out new ways of doing things without money.

ACCE: Compared to last century, do you think there is any changes or development of experimental films? 

Chodorov: I don’t see a huge change but see the evolution. The films that I’ve seen recently by young filmmakers who call themselves experimental filmmakers, have a lot of messages. It’s about politics, sexual identities, or families, which is not just playful imagery. There are lots of approaches to making an experimental film. But the ones I saw recently was disappointed as they were using experimental film to do something more political. Personally, I don’t really agree with that and wouldn’t make films like that. For me. personal experience is valuable.

ACCE: So for you, experimental films are more like a visual journey than a political expression.

Chodorov: I don’t think filmmaking has to be a polemical act to prove something or to convey a message. It can be just a visual experience. The best films that I see are the ones where I wish I’d made the film, or I don’t know how they made it. I’m curious about how they made it. What intrigues me is whole process, not just the result.

ACCE: Besides the topic of concerning, how about the development of digital technology? In commercial movies or even arthouse movie, they majorly change to digital but in experimental filmmaking, the change doesn’t develop that fast. So how do you think technology means to experimental films?

Chodorov: I think it’s difficult to experiment with new technology. With film, you can develop it with different chemicals, or you can scratch the film, shoot upside down or do double exposure. But with digital material, t’s not organic but programmed, technical and industrial.

Today with technology, people who want to make video pieces that are experimental, is just shoot the real world. Then they create an environment that’s experimental. It’s not the image that’s experimental anymore. As if you’re looking into a world through a window, that world is probably experimental, but not the window. However with film, the window itself is experimental, with shapes and graphics. You’re not looking into a fictional space but a surface. You always can tell the texture.

However, the video technology is engineered to make you forget you’re watching an image (forget the window) but to watch the world. Some people make video abstract but it’s not interesting to me. Instead, something on the frontier, an image interacting with the texture makes an intriguing effect or a feeling interests me.

ACCE: In recent year, do you see some experimental filmmakers which impressed you?

Chodorov: I saw Alexander Larose’s films recently, which is amazing. He would took a walk down the path from his house in Canada to a river, where has trees, fences and sometimes somebody else walks by. Meanwhile, he would shoot with a large 35mm camera. Then he would go back, rewind the film and do the walk again, repeating 30 or 40 times.

His images are like little particles moving, with numerous dots of colors and light likes a tunnel and. The result is totally different, recording his experience and body movement, as well as how the film reacts to light.

When you see something that never have seen before, it’s exciting. It’s challenging now for young filmmakers to be in a situation where everything’s been done. But young filmmakers come up with new ideas that no one else has done before.

ACCE: What inspired you to establish RE:VOIR, a label dedicated to distributing and promoting experimental cinema?

Chodorov: I started working at another experimental film distribution company called Lighcone from 1990 to 1997. A lot of festival programmers were coming to LightCone and asking for watching the films. I was the young student there so they would ask me to project the films. But the films were getting scratched from frequent screenings. In the 1980s, VHS tapes had just emerged, becoming popular in America, but not in France.

We began asking filmmakers if they had videotapes of their movies to show to programmers instead of projecting the film. For example, the last wife of Maya Deren’s third husband, who inherited the copyright to Maya Deren’s films, suggested that I could publish these VHS tapes and create a label.

So, I talked to My friends in LightCone about starting LightCone video. If we don’t, someone else will do it. We’re filmmakers who really care about it. They agreed but said:“If you want to do it, you can. We’ll help you but it’s your thing.”

Then I started my own project with partners from LightCone. In 1995, I released the first three videotapes (Maya Deren, Patrick Bokanowski, and Hans Richter). LightCone is a company that only the film programmers know where to find experimental films. By publishing videotapes and putting them for sale in the shops, they would know LightCone.

At one point, then they said that I was dispersed and didn’t performing well in my role at LightCone. They also though I was using their name because of their reputation. But LightCone helped me to separate myself from them. I collected the unemployment from the government and with that money, I could live a year and a half, also develop my company: RE:VOIR.

ACCE: How’s the name of RE:VOIR came out?

Chodorov: The name has two meanings. The word revoir in French means “to see again”. My idea for the company is I want people to see the films first in the movie theater. Later, if they want to see the film again, they can get the video.

Second meaning is that when you reply to an email, it has a prefix “re:” plus the original subject. “Re:” is from the Latin standing for regarding. So it is about seeing. And in French “voir” means to see. For me, these films are about how the filmmakers see the world their vision and perception. So the name is “re: voir”.

ACCE: For now, usually how many videos you publish a year? And how you make the choice?

Chodorov: Now, we have an editorial program that publishes 6 to 10 videos a year depends on how big the projects are. Usually, I have a long list of what I think is important to publish, as most people don’t know those. It’s not just my opinion, but the history.

We try and publish those historical filmmakers. Who don’t have the means to digitize their films, or maybe they even died and their family doesn’t know what to do with their films.

For example, I’m preparing to publish Ed Emshwiller’s films which are very important and strong, from the 50s to 70s. Though distributed by the Cooperatives for many years but these films are still unknown and secret.

Ed’s films really influenced a lot of other filmmakers at that time in the 60s, and were written in books of experimental film in the 70s. He’s an important filmmaker. You could read about his films, but not see them. I’m very excited about this because I’ll be able to share with people who don’t know these beautiful movies.

ACCE: In addition to RE:VOIR, you also founded a shared film lab called L’Abominable in 1996. Could you tell us more about it?

Chodorov: Around 1992-1994 my friends and I learned how to develop our own super-8 and 16mm films in Grenoble, a town four hours south of Paris, where a group of young filmmakers had set up their own darkroom. They were very generous and taught us how to do it and let us use their equipment.

We had decided it would be nice to open our own lab space in Paris and we started looking for a cheap place to rent. Suddenly this Grenoble lab closed. They said too many people were coming – from Paris, Geneva, Brussels and all over France – and they could no longer help everyone but they would help us open our own labs.

Then there were a dozen people in Paris who joined our project and we opened our own lab in 1996. We started the lab in a basement space in Asnières, a suburb of Paris. We started with hand developing but quickly acquired a lot of machines from from commercial labs who were starting to go out of business in the 1990s, for doing printing, processing, editing, special effects and sound. Pretty quickly we had accumulated a lot of big heavy machines. 8 years later, after the owner passed away and the building was demolished, we were forced to move out of Asnières.

ACCE: Where did L’Abominable move to later on?

Chodorov: We wrote to all the places around the suburbs to find another space. And we only got one reply from la Courneuve. That is a very industrial suburb, but they wanted to do more artistic cultural activities. In 2004, we went there. There was actually an empty school. We were given the kitchen with lots of storage space and big refrigerators which is good for us because they’re like dark rooms and they’re cold.

Therefore, we built up the space. It was time that many labs went out of business like LTC, a big and important lab who would print feature films for festivals and distribution. We tried to get equipment from them but they didn’t want to give us anything. However, after LTC finally left their building, and we called the contractors who were supposed to tear the building down, and they said please take what you want. In the end, we even got their white jackets marking LTC, and more important, lots of equipment.

The space in Courneuve hadn’t been tear down until 2022. We were in trouble because we need a lot more space now. And we don’t know where we can go. We packed everything up in boxes and crates, and again, started looking in all the suburbs, especially abandoned factories who were looking for cultural groups.

We found Épinay-sur-Seine. There’s a very big film lab called Éclair, the most important lab after LTC. They’re still existing, but they closed the factories for developing and printing. Epinay sur seine wants to protect their building to make it a cultural center. So we applied to join that they agreed to offered us main building with all the printing machines and projection rooms.

But they asked to pay for a 35 year lease including paying for all the renovation and reconstruction. The total budget is 3.3 million euros. For a nonprofit group, we have no money so we had to fundraise and get grants such as CNC, Île-de-France, individuals etc. Finally we have found 3.4 million. Our next step is to do the restoration, construction and to rewire the old big machines. Then we can move in to set up and reactivate our activity.

ACCE: How do you define the concept of this shared film lab, and how do you choose members to join?

Chodorov: It’s a self-service, membership-based lab. We don’t offer services; everyone has to operate the equipment themselves. However, we do provide assistance and guidance to help them become independent. Once they’re trained, they can pass on their knowledge by teaching the next person, ensuring that the skills and techniques are passed down through generations.

We don’t choose someone who is just curious, but someone is shooting in film camera and wants to develop by themselves. But we only have very few opportunities, about four times and 6 new people per year, we always have a waiting list for people who want to join. At first, we will be there and teach them everything about the lab, not only the chemicals, but also how to use it. So that the lab is well organized for the next people. When they finally don’t need help, they’re a member. Everyone who’s a member can reserve and come. Then later if somebody’s new comes, we asked our members who wants to help the new people.

Also when we need to do something, for example, a member need a truck or people to lift for transferring some machines, we’ll email all and ask for help. Everybody helps out whenever we need to do something. We are a collective filled with a community spirit.