When queer experimental filmmaker Charles Lum died in 2021, he left his friend and frequent collaborator Todd Verow in charge of his body of work. This archive included Super 8 films that Lum had shot in the 1970s and 80s and his Super 8 film camera, along with several undeveloped cartridges and some unused but expired cartridges. Prior to Lum’s passing, the filmmakers had discussed wanting use this footage to create a new feature. When Verow developed the cartridges he was delighted to discover some beautifully degraded images. After reading Lum’s extensive and explicit cruising diaries, and remembering stories he had told him, Verow came up with the premise of an intended feature. An older man desperately trying to recall all of his lovers and sexual encounters, while the protagonist’s memory is fading and the films he shot of his former lovers are disintegrating. Verow incorporated Super 8 footage that he had shot himself in the 80s and 90s and went about shooting new footage on Charles’ outdated Super 8 film to flesh out the story and create new memories.
The sexy, poignant and hypnotic result is Memorabilia which received its UK premiere at the 39th BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and will play The Arzner cinema in London this Friday, March 27th at 10pm with Verow in person for a Q&A. Ahead of the screening, Todd Verow speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about his posthumous collaboration with Lum, inspirations for the film and what he enjoys about the qualities of Super 8 film.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: What experience did you have with Super 8 before Memorabilia?
Todd Verow: “When I first started making films as an art school student at RISD in the 1980s, I shot and edited on Super 8 and then transferred it to video. I made a lot of my early films that way, like V Is For Violet, Built For Endurance, and The Flesh Is Willing.”
“Before video was available, Super 8 was really the first consumer format which allowed people to film things in their own lives. I like that it was created for consumer use and that it wasn’t considered a professional film format. You associate Super 8 with home movies or documentary, so in some ways it represents reality more than 16mm film or 35mm film. You don’t really think of it as being a narrative format.”
What other properties does Super 8 have that you enjoy working with in contrast to video or digital?
“I always liked Super 8 because it’s so small. The film itself is small and so is the camera. Everything about it is small. It’s just three or four minutes long, depending on what film speed you shoot it at, so you really have to think about everything before you shoot it and also edit it in the camera. Whereas with video or digital filmmaking you can shoot and shoot and shoot because you’ve got an unlimited amount of time.”
“I like the limitations of Super 8 and I also like the fact that you’re never really sure what you’re going to get until you get the film back, especially when you’re using outdated film stock. You’re not sure what the colors are going to look like, what the image is going to look like, or how degraded it’s going to be. I like that unpredictability. Also, it has a tactile quality to it because the colors are determined by chemistry, not a computer. Super 8 film is sort of a heightened reality.”
How did the idea for Memorabila come about?
“Charles Lum got a Super 8 camera when he was a kid and he started shooting things on it, making home movies and short narrative films. He had all of his old footage scanned and we’d talked about making something with it but we didn’t get around to doing it together because of his illness.”
When did you first get to know Charles and why do you think the collaboration between you worked so well?
“I can vividly remember the first time I met Charles. He came up to me at a film festival about 15 years ago. He was so excited and energetic. He was the complete opposite of me, because I’m pretty reserved, quiet and shy, but I’ve always been drawn to people who are very different from me. So the two of us working together was a good contrast because I’m very specific and focused and he was sort of all over the place in a good way. It was nice to have him open up my world and for me to focus his world. I think that’s why it worked out really well as a collaboration.”
What has it been like to work with his footage since he passed away?
“Because we worked closely on so many different projects—where we filmed and then edited them together—I feel like I have a really good sense of him. So when I’m working without him here physically, I feel like he’s still with me. I can hear him saying things like, ‘Make this shorter’, or ‘Make this funnier!’ His voice is still in me. So it’s bittersweet because it makes me really miss him, but I’m also really glad to be able to do this work for him, without him.”
How did you go about blending the archive footage and new work that you shot on Super 8?
“About a third of the film is footage that Charles shot in the 70s and 80s. Another third is film that I shot in 80s and 90s, and then the final third is stuff that I shot recently using outdated Super 8 film that Charles left me. It wasn’t planned out to be divided up like that, but it just worked out that way.”
“I started with Charles’ footage and then incorporated stuff I’d already shot to flesh out his stories and my own stories in the film, then after that I figured out what else I needed to shoot. With the new stuff I shot, I tried to edit it all in the camera. I shot the new stuff with Charles’s footage and my footage in mind to try to recreate the style of both of them, so it feels like it’s part of the original footage rather than something new.”
“I wanted the viewer to suspend disbelief in a different kind of way, where you’re always aware that you’re watching a film, but at the same time you feel like you’re watching a film that somebody made about their memories. So it’s sort of a double suspension of disbelief. There are jump cuts, there are hairs and there is dirt on the camera, some of the film is faded and disintegrating, and some of it’s overexposed, or underexposed, or a little out of focus. I wanted to keep all of that in there because I wanted it to be a tactile thing where you don’t get lost in the film, but you’re always a part of the film and you can always feel the physicality of it.”
How did you approach editing?
“It wasn’t a traditional editing process, I edited it in a way where it’s got a stream of consciousness feel to it. The sound had a lot to do with that too, because none of the film had any sync sound whatsoever so the sound was created out of nothing. I think that takes the film to a different level, where the sound is taking you on a journey as well. I like that contrast, where the sound and the visuals are opposing each other, but also complimenting each other.”
What links do you see between memory and degraded film?
“We think of film as being something permanent, but it isn’t really. That’s why film preservation is so important because film degrades, it disintegrates, it starts falling apart, and the colors and images start to fade. I like the idea of it being like memories, in that memories fade and become something new or different as we get older. I thought there was a nice parallel between someone trying to remember things and the films they’d shot disintegrating. So their memories are fading and the films are fading at the same time. Your memories are an ethereal thing, they’re not permanent, they fade with you and I think there’s something beautiful about that.”
What was your approach to memory with this film more generally?
“Memories are slippery things. They come in and out of focus. They’re not linear. You might think of something from your childhood at the same time that you think about something that happened last week. I liked the idea of trying to organize your memories, but you can never really do that. So the film is about trying to put everything in order, but it’s not necessarily a linear order, it’s more an emotional order.”
“I also wanted to think about memories and dreams and how they are related and how they can get confused. Sometimes you’ll remember something, but it was actually a dream you had or you’ll think you’re recalling a dream, but it was actually a memory. So there is a confusion about what is real and what isn’t and about what’s objective and what’s subjective and what’s conscious and what’s unconscious.”
What did you want to bring to the film with the narration and soundscape?
“I approached this as a visual film about memory, so I wanted to shape the visuals first. To do that, I used Charles’ diaries and the stories that he’d told me as well as some of my own memories.
I didn’t want there to be a lot of narration, but I wanted there to be some to bring the audience in and then let them fill in the blanks. So I edited the narration down to the bare minimum, or the bare maximum, of what I wanted it to be. I really didn’t want there to be a lot of words spoken, but I wanted what there was to be specific. It was the same thing with the sound.”
“Smell really powerfully evokes memories. If you smell something, it’ll bring you right back to a specific date and time and a memory. Obviously, you can’t have smell on film, unless you do Odorama cards like John Waters did with Polyester, but I didn’t want to do that. So I wanted to try to achieve that with sound instead. I wanted the sound to flow through the whole thing and to use music and sound effects to conjure up memories and dreams and emotions.”
How did you go about casting the film?
“The interesting thing about all the people in the film is that they’re not the real people that are being spoken about. So in a lot of ways, the film is recreations of memories. The idea of talking about real people but having actors portray them was something that Charles and I were both really interested in and that’s why the film is narrative and not a documentary.”
Were there any filmmakers or films that inspired you?
“I was thinking a lot about Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon and her other films which I’ve always loved. I was also thinking a lot about Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. It’s so brilliant the way it plays with memories and subjectivity and subconsciousness. I watched that many times and that was definitely part of the inspiration for Memorabilia. Stan Brakhage’s use of film and the physicality of it was also an inspiration for part of it.”
By James Kleinmann
Memorabilia received its UK premiere at the 39th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and will play at London’s The Arzner cinema on Friday, March 27th at 10pm followed by an in-person Q&A with the Todd Verow. For more details and to purchase tickets visit thearzner.com.
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