STRAFFORD — Originally, Quinn Thomashow had planned to screen her senior thesis film inside a wooden car she was making.
But the Strafford native had to abandon that plan when Hampshire College closed its Amherst, Mass., campus in mid-March. Back at home, she was resigned to the film not being seen, but her thesis adviser, Hampshire film professor Hope Tucker, made an offhand suggestion: “What if you just projected the film on your house?”
So Thomashow, 22, set about finding projectors she could borrow and made a couple of test runs. She plans to project the film to very small audiences who will remain in their cars on Friday and Saturday evenings.
The screenings in her hometown have a serendipitous quality. Thomashow spent four months touring with a band in late 2019 to gather the elements of her film. Titled The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts, the 10-minute film consists of footage she shot during the trip on a Super 8 camera, animations she made and cameraless film made by participants in filmmaking workshops she conducted during the trip.
Her aim was to explore through filmmaking both her own inner workings and the interior lives of the workshop participants. Collective memories and experiences are greater than those of any one person, Thomashow said, adding that the novel coronavirus pandemic bears this out.
“Now we really do have a collective consciousness,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Everyone is going through it in some way. … I try to use film as a way of discussing that.”
Thomashow developed the black and white film she shot using coffee, an alternative and less toxic way to develop film. She also shot color film and came home with an hour of footage. Participants in her workshops made marks directly on 16 mm film that had no light-sensitive emulsion. They used markers, tape, nail polish and other things that would show up when the film was put through a projector. Cameraless filmmaking isn’t new, but it’s even less common now that film photography has become a niche.
“I like it because it’s physical, and I like it because of how much time it takes,” either to process the film or to make cameraless film, she said. It’s akin to how we process memories, think them through.
Thomashow plans to keep working on aspects of the film after she screens it. For this weekend, she will project the animations from inside the house onto four screens set up in windows, while she projects a digital cut of the film she shot and the film made in the workshops onto the side of the house. The audience will be able to play the sound for the film through a frequency on their car radios.
A few people have signed up for the evening screenings, and it isn’t possible to attend without signing up first. Only three cars will be allowed to park at any one time, and no one is allowed to get out of their cars, she said.
“I’m worried that people will not read the instructions,” Thomashow said. “It’s the health concerns that freak me out the most.”
Anyone who wants to see Thomashow’s film needs to contact her at qct16@hampshire.edu. If the screenings planned for Friday and Saturday evenings fill up, she might run more.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
