Charlotte Pryce

Charlotte Pryce is an English experimental 16mm filmmaker who uses proto-cinematic, most notably magic lantern projecting, techniques to create films with the unique ability to make nature look otherworldly or as she describes “observational reveries.” Common subjects of her films include plants, insects, animals, books, and microscopic elements. She often plays with lighting and distortion, often with glass or water. Her earlier work was primarily soundless and non-narrative, but recently she’s been experimenting with narration and storytelling. She has been making films since 1986 and has had her work screened around the world. She graduated with her BFA from the Slade School of Art at University College London and got her MFA at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. She has taught experimental film at a variety of institutions including CalArts, SAIC, San Francisco Art Institute, Academy of Art, and the Kent Institute of Design. In 2013, she was awarded the Edwards Douglas Award for best experimental cinema achievement by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. She has had retrospectives of her work featured at the Rotterdam international film festival, Bozar, Centre Pompidou, and the Mostra de Cinema Periferico.

Charlotte Pryce was interviewed by Aryssa Guerrero April 2025

1.Your visual style is very unique, how did you find this style? Was the style immediate in your early works or did it take some time to develop into your current style?

I have never given much thought to style - yet my work does have a coherent consistent look. It is accidental rather than deliberate. Color is important to me. I like warm colors, earth tones. I am attracted to the microscopic; to experiences of the natural world; to a wonderment that recalls childhood. These are consistent threads in my work- as is a love of the materiality of film and the mystery of the photographic image.

2. What is your creative process for creating films? Did you use any specific techniques

either for filming and/or processing?

My process shifts and changes. Recently I have been writing first, then collecting images, sometimes even staging a shoot. With all my films I like to shoot on 16mm and hand process, I will then often optically print and further manipulate the footage. I am less interested in documenting the world than in creating a feeling or sentience of a time and place. I am looking for images that allow for reverie. I take a long time to make a film and will often begin to edit only to return to the camera to reshoot and collect more images.

3. What is your approach to sound in your films? Of the films I was able to access

online, all but one were silent, what is the reasoning behind the silence?

My three most recent films Pwdre Ser- the rot of stars, Of this Beguiling Membrane and and so it Came about (A Tale of Consequential Dormancy) all have sound. These films though shot on 16mm all have a digital finish- I think silence in a digital world is complicated and difficult- it is a noisy medium. My 16mm films are mostly silent. I wanted the films to exist in a different space and to exist as quiet moments of reverie.

4. One of my favorite aspects of your films was the way you used lighting in such creative and innovative ways. What is your approach to lighting and how does it play a role in your films?

I respond very strongly to light and color. In most of my silent films light is an animating element - it shifts uncovers and hides the world from our sight. I am also very interested in light as a substance. In my film Prima Materia, inspired by Lucretius On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), I set out to explore the mystery of light’s dual existence as both a particle and a wave. My interest in light, and the possible effect of an old light-light from a dying star- was the subject of my film Pwdre Ser the rot of stars.

5. “Curious Light” and “Looking Glass Insects” both feature the novel “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll. Why did you choose this book specifically, do you have a personal connection with this book?

I have always loved Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. I remember being read the book by my father when I was a child, and I particularly remember feeling that the book somehow had a life even when the pages were closed. I wanted to explore this mysterious sentience. Immediately when I began to play with lighting the pages I was delighted to see the super-impositions that were created- Alice seemed to slip through the pages, the cheshire cat appeared and disappeared and the rabbit’s ghost shifted elusively. The film was hand-processed and the solarizing of the chemistry added to the slippage between worlds and substances. I could not resist making Looking-glass Insects. That chapter is full of puns about language and names, and ultimately about defining things. I wanted to play with the lens- the magnifying glass is another kind of looking glass - to focus on certain words. I also used the magnifier to set the image of the Snap dragon fly whose head is a burning raisin- alight. So my film gently questions the impartial objectivity of the lens. It is a sort of optical pun.

6. What compelled you to start making experimental films- were you inspired by something/someone?

I feel indebted to many filmmakers and artists whose work I have admired. The first experimental films I saw left a huge impression: Maya Deren’s Meshes of an Afternoon and Bruce Baillie’s All My Life. I return again and again to Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive - the mystery of the child’s world, the entwining of the film within the film and the metaphor of the natural world hold endless delight!

7. What is your personal relationship to your work? Do they hold a deeper meaning, do you consider them expressions of yourself?

I feel incomplete, and slightly antsy if I am not working on a film. It is important for me to make things - not just consume and absorb experiences and ideas. Mine is a cinema of sentience, and particularly, with the silent films I was trying to create a language of texture, form and color that exists outside of language - celebrations of the sentience of the natural world. Recently I have been writing short stories, and I have been excited to explore the fairy/ folk tale as a way to incorporate narrative into the natural world.

8. Would you consider yourself a feminist, and furthermore, a feminist filmmaker?

I do consider myself a feminist and I am very grateful to women filmmakers who have been my mentors and inspiration. I support equality in the arts, work, life, education, and the feminist movement has sought to do this. My films and work are not overtly political, but I am conscious that my films project a feminine point of view/sentiment.

9. Do you have a dream project and if so what would it be? Imagine you were given complete artistic freedom, unlimited money and resources to create anything that you wanted- what would it be?

I have a dream of making a film based on the garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.