Need and Desire 2026

Directed by Francesca Svampa

A gesture of erasure. A spell. If you lift the emulsion from a photograph, destroy its surface, transplant it onto a new body, does the memory it carried survive? Need and Desire originates from this question, and from the poetic belief that making a film can alter reality. The cinematic act becomes incantation: a process that destroys and reconstructs simultaneously. Still memories become an “emulsional” landscape. Need and Desire is a cameraless handmade film exploring the materiality of emulsion through instant photographs lifted and transplanted onto a Super 8 polyester base of recycled film scraps.