10 ans de L'Abominable

L'Abominable is an artist-run film lab.

It offers tools to artistsand film-makers for developing, reworking, editing and printing super-8, 16mm and 35mm movie film.

As a non-profit association, the lab offers no professional services such as processing or 16mm blow-ups. In order to work in the lab you must become a member by participating in an initiation day during which the different machines are demonstrated. New members can then present their projects and determine with us the best way to achieve these in the lab. Later, members reserve time at the lab to work on their projects. Staff is available to help new members until they are able to work on their own.

Artists self-producing their work pay modest prices to cover administration costs in a volunteer spirit. If the member receives financing grants, we draw up an estimate including our time and assistance.

L'Abominable keeps paper and video archives on the different projects that have been made since its inception in 1996. You can download here (in pdf format) a regularly updated list of these works. As indicated in the list, most of the films made at the lab are distributed by theCollectif Jeune Cinéma or by Light Cone. You can also find a history of the group on the site cineastes.net.

L'Abominable also offers workshops on cinema as a plastic art, a hands-on introduction to the language of images. This workshop may vary, following different experimental techniques. It is an opportunity to discover the richness of plastic experimentation in cinema since the beginning of the 20th century and to show how much room is left for current investigation and exploration of our relationship to the world.

If you wish to have your black and white super-8 reversal film developed, we can suggest Andec in Berlin, or Super-8 Lab in the Hague. If you are looking for other services in super-8 production (such as telecinema), please see Kodak's Belgian Super-8 page.

L'Abominable is member of an informal network of organizations (collective production workshops, distribution cooperatives, microcinemas) listed on the site cineastes.net. This network mobiliized in 2001 around a Manifesto defending its conception of creative cinema, its distribution and exhibition. This Manifesto acts as a petition we encourage you to sign, either on behalf of an organization or yourself.