Superimposition
Two or more images exposed onto the same frame, so they appear at once, one seen through another.
Superimposition can be made in the camera, by winding the film back and shooting again, or later on a printer. Story films use it briefly for ghosts and dissolves. Experimental filmmakers build whole films from it: Stan Brakhage stacked up to four layers in Dog Star Man, and Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome swims in them.
Ed Emshwiller exposed one gesture over and over onto the same film for Thanatopsis. Alexandre Larose layers repeated walks to the same lake until the path turns to light.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Still from brouillard #15 to come. brouillard #15
Another film in the brouillard series, built from repeated walks from his parents' house to the nearby lake.
Still from brouillard – passage #14 to come. brouillard – passage #14
Repeated walks to Lac-Saint-Charles, layered in camera onto one roll of film, so the path becomes a single pulsing passage of light.
Nearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.
Optical printing
Rephotographing film onto film, with a projector aimed into a camera, so images can be layered, slowed, recoloured or remade.
Cine-dance
A name used in the 1960s for films that made the dancer and the camera equal partners.
French Impressionist cinema
Paris filmmakers of the 1920s who used close-ups, superimposition, distortion and fast cutting to put a character's feelings and memories on screen.
Photochemical film
Films made with the physical materials of film, its emulsion, chemistry and printers, rather than digital tools.