Nicholas Christenson

A tribute to friends near and far. S8 - 50D, shot in March 2025, in NYC and Berlin

A roll and a half made to delight in color and the presence of friends. Steps toward learning to read in the dark.

In February of 2023, Nicholas came to Berlin, exhausted from not sleeping the night before and catching a flight at the crack of dawn. I asked him to sit down and be filmed for a part of a then-gestating idea for a new film. He was interviewed on camera for about 10 minutes, and then I stopped asking questions. He was so exhausted he started to fall asleep on camera. Nearly a year later, he recorded an improvised sound piece to soundtrack the images. Now the two are finally united, to share with the public for the first time. The vignetting (and the reason I was able to zoom smoothly and quickly) is from using a C-mount lens from my Bolex on a GH4.

"My first 16mm, Sightreading, was shot in August 2022 in Minneapolis and Chicago. It uses images from three sources: black mattes held in front of the sky near my parents’ house which were filmed and edited in-camera to a metronome; my friends drinking wine and discussing The Bachelor in their Chicago apartment; and details of a Breughel painting filmed from a television." -NC