Emmanuel Blackwell III establishes Swap Film .Co, a small film processing company that also creates a tightly knit community of San Francisco photographers that support each other through tough times.

Director's Statement

I started using Swap Film's processing services at the beginning of 2022, and quickly realized what a special community was being cultivated. By offering a membership with an affordable rate on film, processing services and scans, Swap Film has empowered artists to more readily experiment and produce compelling photography on analogue film. In a San Francisco where artists of color are being continually excluded and priced out, the tight-knight community of photographers who use Swap Film uplift one another, even through times of devastating loss. I was honored that Emmanuel allowed the cohort of teenage filmmakers that I mentored at BAYCAT in 2022 to amplify his story through this short film. This work is made by various generations of San Francisco creatives in the hope of documenting our stories- as photographers, friends, students, and people of diverse backgrounds coming together through art.

Category: Short Doc.

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