Happy Birthday was created with a newly-found cassette recording from my 1970 birthday party. One hears a 16mm camera motor starting and stopping in the background as my father directs me to mark the “takes” in a 16mm film that was also found, but never developed, and whose images were consequently lost. Using the same Bolex camera that he had used, I recreated the images to accompany the found sound, a blank screen formed by morning sunlight, textured with the bubbles and scratches of hand processing in the basement barn of the Film Farm. [Originally shot at Philip Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat in Ontario, the black-and-white film was hand-processed.]
