Navigators

December 1919. The U.S. government deports 249 anarchists and radicals on the “Soviet Ark.” Five years later, this same ship becomes the décor for Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy “The Navigator.”

«Navigators draws on a variety of materials shot and reworked on 16 and 35mm film on the optical printer and the rostrum camera. In order to make the film, I collected film prints and learned how to use the wide range of machines for shooting, reworking, and developing photochemical film at L’Abominable, an artist-run film lab in the Paris region. I also sought out books, photographs, newspapers, postcards, 78 rpm records, and various ephemera related to the First Red Scare, the Buford, and the deportation. The emotion of carefully turning a yellowed page, of inspecting signs of use and wear, and of focusing in on texture and printing techniques were all important sources of inspiration to me when reworking these physical remnants of history transformed by the tools of photochemical film. In regard to the printed materials used in Navigators, I chose to shoot the items from my own collection with color film and to use black and white stock for the digitally-sourced archives. In addition to these archival materials, the film’s letterpress intertitles, excerpted from the writings and letters of the deportees, were printed by Eric Nunes (Ampersand Press Lab) before being shot on 16mm film on the rostrum camera. The film’s soundtrack was made from slowed-down 78 rpm records, the majority of which were released during the period of the First Red Scare in the United States.»

— Noah Teichner