Helen Hill (ed.): Recipes for Disaster: A Handcrafted Film Cookbooklet (2001/2005)

“This is a collection of handcrafted film recipes from 37 fellow experimental filmmakers, mostly from Canada but also from all over. These generous folks donated their blueprints, ideas, drawings and technical information for only free copies of this book and a chance to read everyone else’s contributions. Thank you to all these fine filmmakers. And thank you to my husband Paul Gailiunas, who helped all along.

During 1999 and 2000, the Canada Council for the Arts gave me a grant to learn about handcrafted film. I traveled from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary. I met dozens of experimental filmmakers who shared their techniques with me. I thought the least I could do would be to gather this scattered information together. Thank you Canada Council, for funding this good year. And thank you to Laura and Kelly at the Splice This! Super 8 Film Festival in Toronto. They gave me what I needed–a deadline. This book was launched at the 2001 festival.

The main changes in this new version are my new permanent address in New Orleans and the loss of a favorite film stock.

Kodak no longer makes the film stock 7378, which is a high contrast black and white film used in many of these handprocessing recipes. However, the film stock called 3378e has been tested in many underground filmmaking labs and seems to work just the same. So anywhere you see 7378 mentioned, you may use 3378e instead.” (from Introduction)

A revised, post-hurricane edition of the book
95 pages
via Andre Castro

about Helen Hill (wikipedia)

google books

PDF (updated on 2012-12-5)
Related: To Boldly Go: A Starters Guide to Hand Made and DIY Films
Related: Cherry Kino: Wondermental Super8 and 16mm Film Techniques