Instant Dreams (2017) - full transcript
INSTANT DREAMS tells the story of a group of scientist who are trying to unravel the chemical formula of Polaroid and the Polaroid-users that eagerly await its rebirth. Each in their own way tries to keeps their instant dream alive.
Once, not too long ago, there was a
perfect chemical formula of imperfection.
It changed the way we captured
and imagined the world as we know it.
But then things changed.
The digital dark ages
took hold of our lives.
The perfect formula was lost.
My dream,
which I used to talk about then...
...off being able to take a
wallet out of my pocket...
...press a button...
...and have the picture.
In these dark times, we wait.
But there's still hope.
I'm really looking forward
to seeing this result.
A few seconds.
Yeah,
it's an important experiment.
A few seconds, a few seconds.
Is this actually Gen 2?
Waiting for a wonder.
Three minutes.
It's too slow.
I don't call this
'Instant film'.
It's different from
what Dr. Land did.
We have to change the process.
99 million tons of
snow fall on New York...
...in the greatest storm
of its recorded history.
The precipitation catches
the great city unawares...
...and gradually puts the
big town in a deep-freeze.
As the snow descends at the
rate of two inches per hour...
...car travel becomes hazardous.
Thousands are marooned
away from home...
...as travel facilities halt and
accidents multiply in the streets.
This is when The New
York Times first reported...
...on the invention of a new
form called 'one-step photography'.
Edwin Land
presented it at the...
...meeting of The American Optical Society
in February, 1947, here in New York...
...the day after a huge snowstorm
almost shut the whole place down.
He demonstrated it in front
of a room full of scientists...
...by taking a large-format
photograph of himself...
...and revealing it,
peeling it open, 60 seconds later.
There's also an editorial
in The Times the same day.
It says: There's nothing like
this in the history of photography.
Dr. Edwin Land claims to
have invented a new camera...
...which will
revolutionize photography.
It all looks quite ordinary right
up to the time he takes a picture.
But, says the doctor, the difference is
that all you have to do with his camera...
...is to wait exactly one minute,
then open it up...
...and you'll find the
negative and the print.
When I was about 13 or 14, I got my
own Polaroid camera for the first time.
I bought it in the junk room of
a bookstore for three dollars.
It ended up accidentally starting
me on this journey that I'm still taking.
I'm the author of 'Instant:
The Story of Polaroid'.
In 2008, Polaroid announced that it
was going to stop manufacturing film.
It felt like I was confronted
with the death of a friend.
I was a new parent at the time.
I was juggling a full-time job...
...but I wanted this
story to get told...
...to keep this
technological vision alive.
Almost anyone you ask knows
what a Polaroid photograph is.
At its peak, Polaroid sold more than
a billion individual photographs a year.
It was an enormous company.
There was a fantastic character
at the center of it all in Edwin Land.
He was really one of the great
visionaries of American technology.
He had a vision for the future
of the evolving human being.
The founding myth of Polaroid
photography goes like this:
Edwin Land, on vacation with
his daughter at the end of 1943.
They were in the
mountains of New Mexico...
...and he had taken photographs
of her all day with his Rolleiflex.
At the end of the afternoon,
his daughter, who was three, asked him:
'Daddy,
why can't I see the photos now?'
And Land asked himself: 'Well,
why can't she?'
The story goes that he sent her off
to be with her mother for a while...
...and he spent the
night pacing the resort...
...working a rough form of
his invention out in his head.
In 1985, during the course of the work
undertaken to irrigate the Gobi desert...
...a strange fragment
of rock was discovered.
Research revealed
that it contained a 'spool'.
Further analysis showed the material
to be extraterrestrial in origin...
...and not of human manufacture.
Where did it come from?
A long time ago...
...back in Germany...
...when I was a little girl...
...I dreamed of the desert.
I had to wait...
...for the magic
moment to manifest.
And...
Yeah, it just happened.
Colors show up in a very,
very different way.
It was not what you
actually see with your eyes.
It was like chemistry.
Poisonous.
Just scary.
And really intense.
It was so beautiful.
It triggered something
in my creative being.
I believe I have always
been a photographer.
The desert is definitely
the canvas I work with.
Nobody sees you.
Nobody cares. You
can do anything.
It's just magical.
Just like the Polaroids.
So this is my last
Polaroid stock.
Choose some for today's shoot.
The new stock expired in April,
2009.
And some of the
very old stock...
...expired in 2006.
I have to use these soon, otherwise
they're not going to work anymore.
Of course I can't buy new,
because...
...Polaroid stopped
production a long time ago.
Sometimes you can still buy them on eBay,
but for a lot of money.
So if this is gone, I guess I'm going
to look for something else to do.
I don't know what I'm going to do,
but I'm going to think of something.
There's tens of millions of Polaroid
cameras out there in the modern-day world...
...waiting to be used again.
My mission it to
reinvent the instant film...
...and keep this analog
experience alive into the digital age.
Most people know something
about photographic prints.
They know that a photograph
is a reproduction of things...
...in terms of light and shade.
When we open the shutter,
reflected light from the subject...
...is gathered by the lens
and focused on the film.
When the shutter opens...
...the light penetrates and
strikes the silver halide particles.
And those which the
light reaches wake up.
And which cannot be seen until
it is brought into visible form...
...by chemical means.
This is where the lightened
image comes to life.
The one thing I
always regretted...
...was not having been involved
in Polaroid in its earliest time...
...when they were really
creating this from nothing.
So when the opportunity came
along at The Impossible Project...
...to do what Dr. Land had done originally,
it was awful enticing.
Especially at my age and
the stage I was in my career.
One of the things that Dr. Land did was,
he believed a lot in secrecy.
The chemicals that were being
made and used in the Polaroid film...
...were all assigned
a code number.
They were never called
by their chemical name.
Most people didn't know
what they actually were.
The molecular design
of the instant film...
...is very, very complicated.
The analog instant film...
...is the world's most chemically complex
completely man-made product ever.
When you start to assemble
all this chemistry together...
...there's all kinds of side
reactions that happen.
Many of which we don't
even know what they are.
Just like a living organism,
it's got a mind of its own.
As the world passed into the second half of
the 20th century after the birth of Christ...
...beyond the dreams
of its ancestors...
...modern man has molded
the earth to his liking.
Proud of his vast
creative ability...
...he can boast of the
grandeur of his achievements...
...and admire the scope
of his own imagination.
How you use your eyes to see...
...brings about new forms of
human association and action.
Are you living in today's world?
The walls of your
worlds are coming down.
It's becoming a simple matter
to pick out of your homes...
...your private,
once solely personal life, and record it.
Ours is a brand new
world of all-at-onceness.
We now share too
much about each other...
...to be strangers
to each other.
The chemistry of Polaroid
film being analog...
...in comparison to digital is
closer to the way we're made of.
I think there's also an
analogy to human interaction.
Which is the most
mysterious of all to me.
Land envisioned a future in which
you always have a camera with you.
Not a big, bulky one,
but something small and simple...
...that inserted no impediment
between photographer and subject.
That nothing else would
disrupt the moment.
The idea would be that you would
just shoot pictures all day long.
A future in which one would
document one's life all the time.
In 1970 he made a short
film called 'The Long Walk'.
In it,
he talks about the future of photography.
He reaches into his coat pocket
and pulls out a black wallet.
Everyone who sees it has the
same reaction: 'What did I just see?'
Because it looks for all the world
like he's holding a black iPhone.
They were a long way from the
dream which I used to talk about then...
...of being able to take a
wallet out of my pocket...
...and perhaps open the wallet,
press a button, close the wallet...
...and have the picture.
The camera that would be,
oh, like the telephone...
...something that
you use all day long.
Our long-awaited,
ultimate camera...
...that is a part of the
evolving human being.
And that was almost
forty years ago.
He once said that for a
product to be truly new...
...the world must
not be ready for it.
Because if the world were ready for it,
it wouldn't be much of an invention.
Very sexy, totally see-through.
Where's the gun? I don't
know where the guns are.
This is cute.
So you're just, like,
getting through the area, taking a break...
...on the way to
your dream farm.
Is that a bracelet?
I brought the flower
crown with me.
It'’s funny, because if you open the thing,
you will laugh.
Sort of the same thing
that you're carrying there.
The first shoot I did,
taking people out to the desert...
...gave me the idea to
make a big project out of...
...different characters
living in trailer parks.
Trying to find love.
Trying to understand the world.
Make sense out of the world.
The sun's already gone.
Shit.
Maybe the face after.
Don't look at me.
Yeah, that's good.
Keep doing what you're doing.
I'm just going to both of you.
"Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!"
For me the essence of
my work is telling stories.
A little bit further down
with the head towards me.
Yeah,
looking more into the camera.
Living out your desires,
fantasies.
Building a new world...
...which is far away
from the regular world.
One morning I didn't wake up.
I was worn out, I had a fever.
I fell asleep again
and I dreamed.
My chest felt squeezed.
Certainly it is because of the close-fitting
elastic bandages it is wrapped in.
A little bird said
morning for her love.
The frozen wind crept on up her.
The freezing stream below. There
was no leaf upon the forest bower...
...no flowers upon the ground
and little motion in the air...
...except for the
mill wing's sound.
Charlie Brown...
My little movie star. We're going to get you
a little star on the Hollywood Boulevard.
You're going to be the
most famous of all of them.
"Charlie Brown,
here comes Charlie Brown."
Nice.
I think he peed on me.
- Charlie Brown peed on you? No way.
I feel wetness.
On my hand.
I don't see anything.
- I feel it in my hand.
It didn't.
- I feel something wet on my hand.
He might have spit a
little bit on your hand.
No,
it's coming out of him onto my left hand.
Hey, sweetie.
Was it just that?
- OK, I guess it was drool.
I didn't know he'd do that.
I thought it had to be pee.
No,
they don't really pee. They shit.
Since I've been a little girl, I actually
thought: Oh, we wanted to go to America.
In the middle of the desert, in the
middle of nowhere would be wonderful.
But then when I
came to America...
...I just had a
hit-and-run accident.
I was seven years on crutches.
I had thirty operations.
It was pretty hardcore.
That changed my life.
My way of seeing things.
There might be bad
things happening...
...but still you have some
kind of control of them...
...by creating a
world within a world.
This is so cool. I
love this picture.
I love this color explosion.
That looks like little flowers.
All 'problems' of
an expired Polaroid.
Here you get, like,
the chemistry didn't develop anymore...
...and you can see the rollers
while they pushed out the film.
Where you can
see the yellow part.
Those poor girls
really had to work a lot.
I totally embrace
these kind of mistakes.
I think life is unpredictable.
Therefore it's really great that
the films are so unpredictable.
'Wabi-sabi' is a
Japanese term...
...for something
which is imperfect.
But it also means that...
...only things are perfect
which are imperfect.
Like a dish with a chip,
because it tells a story. It has a life.
Perfect.
Love.
Friendship.
Color.
Memories.
Future.
Love.
I really was married to
Polaroid. I started in 1977...
...and left in 2005.
That's 28 years.
Dr. Land,
his last five years with Polaroid...
...were my first five years.
He was clearly a great role model for me
as somebody who knew how to do science.
He knew the value
of doing experiments...
...and would tell you that there's
no such thing as a failed experiment.
To join this adventure,
I had to move to Europe.
It was a pretty major decision,
because it involved...
...leaving my wife for
a good part of this time.
I just couldn't resist.
It was a chance for me to get
back to what I love the most...
...which is work on the
reinvention of instant film.
The importance of dreams.
It is not easy to
grasp this point.
It implies something vague,
unknown, or hidden from us.
Man never perceives anything fully,
or comprehends anything completely.
He can see, hear,
touch and taste...
...but how far he sees,
how well he hears...
...what his touch tells
him and what he tastes...
...depend upon the number
and quality of his senses.
By using scientific
instruments...
...he can partly compensate
for the deficiencies of his senses.
But the most elaborate
apparatus cannot do more...
...than bring distant or small
objects within range of his eyes...
...or make faint
sounds more audible.
No matter what
instrument he uses...
...at some point he reaches
the edge of certainty...
...beyond which conscious
knowledge cannot pass.
There are, moreover, unconscious
aspects of our perception of reality.
It may appear, for instance,
in the form of a dream.
The book just came out of me.
I wrote most of the time
nights and weekends.
In two long train rides,
I wrote about a third of the book.
There days when I wanted to be doing
other things, but I couldn'’t 't stop.
Always a little voice
looking over your shoulder...
...that says: You should be
working on that a little more.
To keep this weird old way
of making pictures going.
The first Polaroid Land camera,
the old 95.
Graduating to a group of a
couple of rangefinder cameras.
Then came the
electric eye models...
...and more recently,
the color pack cameras.
What a product story.
Polaroid photography did have an
enormous effect on popular culture.
It was just everywhere.
There was even a Polaroid
camera on a bad day in 1963.
The president of the
United States is dead.
That is the only photo of the
moment President Kennedy died.
What I love about this camera is that
it allows you to capture the moment.
Every moment in life...
...that you stop and show: this
happened just then and here.
And those are the
moments we want to keep.
A lot of people think of
Polaroid as a snapshot medium...
...but that you would never
use it for something important.
That's really a misapprehension.
A great many photographers have
pushed this medium to the point...
...where it really
showed its ability.
Take a look at this base and
see what kind of quality we have.
OK, that's one. Another one. No,
that's Gen 2.
You can take a picture of me.
Now I'm going to
do Thomas. Gen 3.
In fact in both of them. Looks
like about the same place almost.
Two minutes.
But it should be...
The Gen 3 should,
in a few minutes...
I'm not sure when.
- It might be a little bit cold in this room.
Press a button...
...and have the picture.
Press a button...
...and have the picture.
Now.
There's probably been
thirty or forty new molecules...
...that have been designed and synthesized
and tested to come up with these.
And it's taken two and a half years,
probably a little over two years.
But the Gen 3 should
start to brighten up...
...and move into
its final phase.
It's too slow.
When the Impossible
Film started...
...after a number of years we were
able to put together a very basic recipe...
...that made the
first Impossible films.
I don't call those
instant films.
It's a full half an hour
to get to a finished print.
Press a button...
When an instant print comes out of a
camera, it's also the experience of time.
Press a button...
There's an organic process
that you're pulled into.
You almost want to
continue watching it.
There's a feel of the evolution of time
passed. That's part of the whole experience.
In an instant digital print...
...there was no experience.
No mystery.
No sense of dreaming.
No sense of time.
It's like being put under
with total anesthesia...
...and wake up four hours later.
There's nothing in-between.
There's nothing else.
It's very strange
how time passes.
Most of these people I
just don't know anymore.
No more connections to them.
And you were so close to people
and they just disappear out of your life.
Very, very, very strange.
Gosh, this is a really nice box.
These are really... That's
me when I was small.
My sister, my grandmother,
mother, my great-grandmother.
That's a very long time ago.
No Polaroids back then.
Me in Cuxhaven growing up. On the beach,
basically.
Me taking my first bath.
Oh my God,
I was looking for these photos.
For years I've been looking
for one particular photo album...
...with all my old student photos
and my childhood passports.
This is basically... This
batch is how I grew up.
I'm going through my life.
It's only such
selective little parts.
My past was such
a different time.
Because it was the time
before digital came in.
They are all moments you remember,
but no pictures exist of them.
Our memories are
always somehow faded.
So everybody can project
their own fantasies on the past.
I can't remember
if I chose this life.
I think I must have, but I might
not have known what I was in for.
My family turned
out to be mostly jerks.
My mom says I was
named after the champagne.
My dad likes to say I was
named after his product.
I had a dog, Lucy.
Born when I was two. She
was just about my only friend.
I got lost in the desert
with her once. Really lost.
I dreamed that I wanted to quit my job
hostessing at this restaurant and I was like:
I was going there to quit
and I was freaking out...
...and then my skin just
kept peeling off of me.
At first I thought
it was sunburn.
But it was all over my face and
I was peeling it off like a mask.
I felt like a new person as I was taking it
off and I had this fresh skin underneath.
So I went to the...
I didn't tell you this part.
So I went to the restaurant...
...and I saw my friend there.
She was like: Oh,
I'm not happy in school, I want to leave.
And I was like: "If you're not happy,
you have to leave. I had a dream about it."
So I told her in the dream that I had a dream.
- So you had a dream in a dream?
Yeah,
I said I had a dream about it.
"I think it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't
go to school if it doesn't make you happy."
"You have to follow
what your dream is."
So then I left the restaurant
and I was in this café...
...and I was giving this pitch
for this movie I want to make...
...to this woman I
know who's a producer...
...in LA, who's a real person,
and I was giving the pitch to her...
...she was like: "I love this idea.
I want to help you get it made."
And I left there and I was going to tell
my family that I was going to make a movie.
It was really cool. And my skin was
like... It was so weird peeling it off.
I would definitely say that
the world is losing magic.
Today, of course,
everything is covered.
So the way you perceive your
past has completely changed.
That's also why you have a different
memory today, which is instant memory.
I think people are obsessed
with the necessity of moments.
And therefore also this deep
feeling about time has changed.
That is actually what I
don't want to be part of.
And so I'm stopping time...
...and creating my
own time dimension.
We have art and order
not to die of the truth.
That fits so well to my life.
Dining in the Altstadt.
I have a table for two.
I am missing you.
Lily's bar for lunch.
A Weiss bier and nice music.
Beginning to rain.
I find myself at times
inspired to write haiku poetry.
It's like an instant print, which is a
very small, single frozen piece of time.
Hey, Jenn.
Hey, I've been waiting.
You've got something
coming up this weekend, right?
You're getting together
with Cindy on Friday?
Friday's going to be great.
- What are you doing?
The Museum of Fine Arts
has an exhibit of Dutch painters.
Are you kidding?
No, it's just ironic. We saw so
many Dutch paintings together.
That's funny. I just got done talking to
Zach who's been visited this weekend...
...by a woman from Amsterdam
who's a composer that he knows.
I'd love to go to that jazz
festival in Amsterdam.
Actually, it's in Hamburg.
- Do you know what week it is?
I think it's in April,
isn't it? I will look it up.
The other thing I want to do this weekend
is pick out a Christmas tree. Alone, again.
I just talked to Zach and I asked
him to help, like he did last year.
Help you get the
tree and put it up.
Sorry I'm not able
to do that with you.
All right. I probably won't
have time to do a lot of it for you.
I'll see you again at Christmas,
but I'll be looking forward to that.
I'll see you later.
Bye bye, love.
- I love you. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Bye bye. - See you.
Well, there it is.
The Polaroid 1000 instant camera.
The world's simplest camera.
It's the exciting
Christmas present...
...that lets you enjoy your
pictures in minutes in brilliant color.
For instant excitement,
instant laughter...
...instant fun.
This is something Edwin
Land wrote on March 25, 1974:
"When a new medium
comes into our midst...
...we proceed to use it pretty
much as we used older media."
"We could not have known
and I've only just learned...
...that a new kind of relationship
between people in groups...
...is brought into
being by instant film...
...when the members of a group are
photographing and being photographed...
...and sharing the photographs."
"It turns out that
buried within us...
...God knows beneath how many pregenital
and Freudian and Calvinistic strata...
...there is latent
interest in each other."
"There is tenderness, curiosity, excitement,
affection, companionability and humor."
"It turns out in this cold world
where man grows distant from man...
...that we have a prehistoric
tribal competence...
...in being partners in the lonely
exploration of a once-empty planet."
Land really thought that
his invention was a tool...
...that would change the way
people related to one another.
He was extremely
romantic about his creation...
...and quite the idealist.
Can you wrap me the
captions on that file again?
I just want to make two changes
and run it by the fact checker...
...and then we can take it to proof.
That'll be good before the end of the day.
Thanks. I'll get them
back to you in ten minutes.
That's a silly pose.
Can you look at me?
Let me see.
I like that one better.
You're smiling a lot more.
I think it really...
I think it really
captures my personality.
You like that one better?
- Yeah. Just my mind wandering.
I think it really
captures my personality.
Yeah, that one's better. You're
making a sort of silly face, though.
Yeah,
but it's the best I can do.
It probably comes out that I
take close to a photo a day of Alex.
Not quite, but pretty nearly.
I hope that it gives him a
way to connect his childhood...
...to something that I was
interested in and writing about.
You know,
he will be one of the last kids...
...to have been
photographed this way.
I've got enough film to last a few
more years, but it's going to dry up soon.
So, he'll be one of the last ones
who remembers how it smelled...
...and how it felt to peel one of
those pictures open and see it.
You know,
when I'm fifty years out of the picture...
...he'll remember
it. That's nice.
It still makes me
laugh looking at it.
Just nine months old,
I guess. Something like that.
And it was Christmas.
Polaroid photography
is social...
...in the way that when
you take an instant picture...
...you pull it out of the camera
and it develops on the spot.
And there's a little time lag. It takes
a minute or two, or three, to happen.
During that time, if the person
you've just taken a picture of...
...doesn't know you well,
if it's a stranger at a party
...or an occasional acquaintance,
you know...
...you're sort of forced to make
small talk to fill in the moment.
The eye is
surprisingly forgiving.
I had a Polaroid executive
say this to me once.
That they're always hung up
on: Is it as good as 35mm quality?
And he said: "Go pick up a newspaper.
You're looking at a bunch of dots."
The eye forgives anything,
if it's a good photograph.
You know that famous
story about Dustin Hoffman...
...and Laurence Olivier
on 'Marathon Man'?
I don't.
Dustin Hoffman would stay up all night,
so he would come in disheveled and dirty.
And Olivier looked
at him once and said:
"My dear boy,
you should try acting. It's much easier."
Are you taking a picture?
For God's sake, I got to reload.
Hang on.
I look a little lazy.
It's Friday night. Lazy is OK.
That's good.
Let's see what we've got.
You know you don't shake?
You know the thing that
celebrities always do?
Where you get the shoulders
square and the hip turned...
...and the arm out. - Square.
That's right. That one. Exactly.
The earlier forms... You
know when you peel them off?
It came off wet.
And you had to
shake it to dry it.
This is a fun one,
'cause it folds.
Isn't it cute?
How do you know these guys?
Hang on. Sorry, the flash didn't go off.
- Oh, no.
How do you know these guys?
Your eye forgives. Look
at a newspaper. It's all dots.
Right, right. - It's all right.
What's this kind of camera?
- This is an SX-70.
Which you can see
in 'Boogie Nights'.
I mean, this is my house, it's my birthday,
all of my friends right here.
That's my wife.
And that's her, like right now.
- That's her two minutes ago.
As you take people's pictures,
people gather around to look at it...
...and ask to have
their picture taken.
So the circle of that moment
widens to a small group.
And then the second
thing that happens...
...is that the photo itself,
because it's a one-of-a-kind object...
...because there's no
digital file or negative...
...gets given to the subject.
This, as far as I know,
is just about unique in photography.
It doesn't happen that
way with any other form.
There won't be digital
files that were transferred...
...from phone to computer, to the
next computer, to the next computer...
...and stored away on
a hard drive somewhere.
Very often,
you will never see the image again.
It's like an artefact of time.
Like a ghost came
out of the machine.
Once, not too long ago, there was a
perfect chemical formula of imperfection.
But then things changed.
A digital image is a stream of dots,
ones and zeros.
An analog instant picture
has three dimensions.
It has thickness...
...and volume.
It weighs something.
I like to describe the
invention to end all inventions.
I call it The Replicator.
It's a duplicating machine that
can make an exact copy of anything.
Confronted with such a device,
our present society would probably...
...sink into a kind of
gluttonous barbarism.
Because everybody would want
unlimited quantities of everything...
...since nothing
would cost anything.
In fact,
cynics may doubt if any human society...
...could survive an invention...
...which would lead to
unlimited abundance...
...and the final ending
of the curse of Adam...
Every human is unique.
It's not an exact replica,
it's not a clone.
The human body that has a
level of chemical complexity...
...and a biochemistry
that is just incredible.
We are trying to modify it...
...but in my opinion,
that is a subjective thing.
It is perfect, but, also,
it is imperfect. All at the same time.
Maybe just... Turn towards the sun
so it's obviously not... Remember?
Exactly. That's
good. That's great.
I ask myself this: Why
did God create us?
What was his purpose?
The world walking by.
I'm watching the reflections
in some sunglasses.
There's a line somewhere.
It's not clearly defined.
We must not cross it.
These are part of the 20 years of work,
but it's only one of the safes.
So we have another one.
So there's 700 in each drawer.
And there are 23 drawers,
by 700.
A great deal of the
secret of our success...
...has been that we have
concentrated on concepts.
That has given us a heavy,
technological weighting...
...that has let us be
years ahead of the field.
The very end has elements of tragedy,
for sure.
Its very success,
in some ways...
...was the thing that made
it fearful about change.
Every time a new environment
forms with a new medium...
...people go back
and live in the old one.
Any new medium completely alters
the image we have of ourselves.
Of this,
you are completely unaware.
Land, although he was
one of the great visionaries...
...was caught in the
wrong time frame.
The limitations of analog media that they
couldn't be shared in volume globally...
...cut him off from the
larger world impact...
...that digital photography
then opened up.
...take a wallet
out of my pocket...
...take a wallet
out of my pocket...
Welcome to the Instant Lab.
You have to choose
an image for exposure.
Do this now.
By the time they realized,
it was too late. It was the mid-Nineties...
...and Sony and the others
were all way ahead of them.
Place your device face
down on the cradle...
...in the top of the tower.
That was the sound of success.
Locate the shutter and
pull it out all the way.
Do this now.
The device will
make the exposure.
Slide the shutter
all the way back.
Press the eject button located
at the front of the Instant Lab...
...firmly for one second.
You have initiated the chemical reactions
that will process your instant photo.
Wait for it.
Thank you for listening and remember:
I can repeat any of my instructions.
The company went bankrupt in
2001. It was sold, and sold again.
That last buyer turned
out to be a crook.
He'd stolen three billion
dollars. He got fifty years.
The factories and the land
under them were sold off.
The one in Waltham I visited.
It was demolished six weeks after I got
there. There's a shopping center there now.
I am on the verge of change.
Because the narratives...
...came to a happy
ending for me.
So everything I was working on
and working through for so long...
...now became reality.
I'm living the dream now.
It seems...
...I want to, like,
see something beyond the image.
To a point where an image
becomes an imagination.
That... See the
land up there? Alex?
That's the beginning
of New Jersey.
And then there's a
long pier over there.
Bapu, my dad, used to, when
he was a little kid, fish off that pier.
He had a really
long fishing pole...
...and go all the way out to the
end and throw his line in the ocean.
You think we can do that someday?
- Sure.
We should ask bapu. The
three of us can go together.
He'd like that and I'd
like that. Want to do it?
We could even go out on a
fishing boat sometime, if you want.
Would you like that? - Cool.
I would love to do that.
Trying to predict the future...
...is a discouraging and
hazardous occupation.
If his predictions sound
at all reasonable...
...you can be quite sure that in 20,
or at most 50 years...
...the progress of
science and technology...
...has made him seem
ridiculously conservative.
On the other hand,
if by some miracle...
...a prophet could describe the future
exactly as it was going to take place...
...his predictions would sound so absurd,
so far-fetched...
...that everybody would
laugh him for scorn.
There's an interesting
quote from Arthur C. Clarke...
...that I think
really applies to us:
"The only way of discovering
the limits of the possible...
...is to venture a little way
beyond and into the impossible."
It's my own opinion that when
it comes to future directions...
...we can learn an awful lot from
visionaries and people like Dr. Land.
To show us possibilities
and which way to go...
...beyond what most of
us would be conceiving of.
People who have this passion
to develop technologies...
...that nobody had
even imagined...
...and continue to keep dreaming
of what human nature is...
...and what it eventually
becomes in the future.
Not too bad.
Very good. Think it will survive
two cats and a grandbaby?
I think it will.
Merry Christmas.
- You look handsome.
Watch the film. - OK, sir.
That's going to be a great shot.
perfect chemical formula of imperfection.
It changed the way we captured
and imagined the world as we know it.
But then things changed.
The digital dark ages
took hold of our lives.
The perfect formula was lost.
My dream,
which I used to talk about then...
...off being able to take a
wallet out of my pocket...
...press a button...
...and have the picture.
In these dark times, we wait.
But there's still hope.
I'm really looking forward
to seeing this result.
A few seconds.
Yeah,
it's an important experiment.
A few seconds, a few seconds.
Is this actually Gen 2?
Waiting for a wonder.
Three minutes.
It's too slow.
I don't call this
'Instant film'.
It's different from
what Dr. Land did.
We have to change the process.
99 million tons of
snow fall on New York...
...in the greatest storm
of its recorded history.
The precipitation catches
the great city unawares...
...and gradually puts the
big town in a deep-freeze.
As the snow descends at the
rate of two inches per hour...
...car travel becomes hazardous.
Thousands are marooned
away from home...
...as travel facilities halt and
accidents multiply in the streets.
This is when The New
York Times first reported...
...on the invention of a new
form called 'one-step photography'.
Edwin Land
presented it at the...
...meeting of The American Optical Society
in February, 1947, here in New York...
...the day after a huge snowstorm
almost shut the whole place down.
He demonstrated it in front
of a room full of scientists...
...by taking a large-format
photograph of himself...
...and revealing it,
peeling it open, 60 seconds later.
There's also an editorial
in The Times the same day.
It says: There's nothing like
this in the history of photography.
Dr. Edwin Land claims to
have invented a new camera...
...which will
revolutionize photography.
It all looks quite ordinary right
up to the time he takes a picture.
But, says the doctor, the difference is
that all you have to do with his camera...
...is to wait exactly one minute,
then open it up...
...and you'll find the
negative and the print.
When I was about 13 or 14, I got my
own Polaroid camera for the first time.
I bought it in the junk room of
a bookstore for three dollars.
It ended up accidentally starting
me on this journey that I'm still taking.
I'm the author of 'Instant:
The Story of Polaroid'.
In 2008, Polaroid announced that it
was going to stop manufacturing film.
It felt like I was confronted
with the death of a friend.
I was a new parent at the time.
I was juggling a full-time job...
...but I wanted this
story to get told...
...to keep this
technological vision alive.
Almost anyone you ask knows
what a Polaroid photograph is.
At its peak, Polaroid sold more than
a billion individual photographs a year.
It was an enormous company.
There was a fantastic character
at the center of it all in Edwin Land.
He was really one of the great
visionaries of American technology.
He had a vision for the future
of the evolving human being.
The founding myth of Polaroid
photography goes like this:
Edwin Land, on vacation with
his daughter at the end of 1943.
They were in the
mountains of New Mexico...
...and he had taken photographs
of her all day with his Rolleiflex.
At the end of the afternoon,
his daughter, who was three, asked him:
'Daddy,
why can't I see the photos now?'
And Land asked himself: 'Well,
why can't she?'
The story goes that he sent her off
to be with her mother for a while...
...and he spent the
night pacing the resort...
...working a rough form of
his invention out in his head.
In 1985, during the course of the work
undertaken to irrigate the Gobi desert...
...a strange fragment
of rock was discovered.
Research revealed
that it contained a 'spool'.
Further analysis showed the material
to be extraterrestrial in origin...
...and not of human manufacture.
Where did it come from?
A long time ago...
...back in Germany...
...when I was a little girl...
...I dreamed of the desert.
I had to wait...
...for the magic
moment to manifest.
And...
Yeah, it just happened.
Colors show up in a very,
very different way.
It was not what you
actually see with your eyes.
It was like chemistry.
Poisonous.
Just scary.
And really intense.
It was so beautiful.
It triggered something
in my creative being.
I believe I have always
been a photographer.
The desert is definitely
the canvas I work with.
Nobody sees you.
Nobody cares. You
can do anything.
It's just magical.
Just like the Polaroids.
So this is my last
Polaroid stock.
Choose some for today's shoot.
The new stock expired in April,
2009.
And some of the
very old stock...
...expired in 2006.
I have to use these soon, otherwise
they're not going to work anymore.
Of course I can't buy new,
because...
...Polaroid stopped
production a long time ago.
Sometimes you can still buy them on eBay,
but for a lot of money.
So if this is gone, I guess I'm going
to look for something else to do.
I don't know what I'm going to do,
but I'm going to think of something.
There's tens of millions of Polaroid
cameras out there in the modern-day world...
...waiting to be used again.
My mission it to
reinvent the instant film...
...and keep this analog
experience alive into the digital age.
Most people know something
about photographic prints.
They know that a photograph
is a reproduction of things...
...in terms of light and shade.
When we open the shutter,
reflected light from the subject...
...is gathered by the lens
and focused on the film.
When the shutter opens...
...the light penetrates and
strikes the silver halide particles.
And those which the
light reaches wake up.
And which cannot be seen until
it is brought into visible form...
...by chemical means.
This is where the lightened
image comes to life.
The one thing I
always regretted...
...was not having been involved
in Polaroid in its earliest time...
...when they were really
creating this from nothing.
So when the opportunity came
along at The Impossible Project...
...to do what Dr. Land had done originally,
it was awful enticing.
Especially at my age and
the stage I was in my career.
One of the things that Dr. Land did was,
he believed a lot in secrecy.
The chemicals that were being
made and used in the Polaroid film...
...were all assigned
a code number.
They were never called
by their chemical name.
Most people didn't know
what they actually were.
The molecular design
of the instant film...
...is very, very complicated.
The analog instant film...
...is the world's most chemically complex
completely man-made product ever.
When you start to assemble
all this chemistry together...
...there's all kinds of side
reactions that happen.
Many of which we don't
even know what they are.
Just like a living organism,
it's got a mind of its own.
As the world passed into the second half of
the 20th century after the birth of Christ...
...beyond the dreams
of its ancestors...
...modern man has molded
the earth to his liking.
Proud of his vast
creative ability...
...he can boast of the
grandeur of his achievements...
...and admire the scope
of his own imagination.
How you use your eyes to see...
...brings about new forms of
human association and action.
Are you living in today's world?
The walls of your
worlds are coming down.
It's becoming a simple matter
to pick out of your homes...
...your private,
once solely personal life, and record it.
Ours is a brand new
world of all-at-onceness.
We now share too
much about each other...
...to be strangers
to each other.
The chemistry of Polaroid
film being analog...
...in comparison to digital is
closer to the way we're made of.
I think there's also an
analogy to human interaction.
Which is the most
mysterious of all to me.
Land envisioned a future in which
you always have a camera with you.
Not a big, bulky one,
but something small and simple...
...that inserted no impediment
between photographer and subject.
That nothing else would
disrupt the moment.
The idea would be that you would
just shoot pictures all day long.
A future in which one would
document one's life all the time.
In 1970 he made a short
film called 'The Long Walk'.
In it,
he talks about the future of photography.
He reaches into his coat pocket
and pulls out a black wallet.
Everyone who sees it has the
same reaction: 'What did I just see?'
Because it looks for all the world
like he's holding a black iPhone.
They were a long way from the
dream which I used to talk about then...
...of being able to take a
wallet out of my pocket...
...and perhaps open the wallet,
press a button, close the wallet...
...and have the picture.
The camera that would be,
oh, like the telephone...
...something that
you use all day long.
Our long-awaited,
ultimate camera...
...that is a part of the
evolving human being.
And that was almost
forty years ago.
He once said that for a
product to be truly new...
...the world must
not be ready for it.
Because if the world were ready for it,
it wouldn't be much of an invention.
Very sexy, totally see-through.
Where's the gun? I don't
know where the guns are.
This is cute.
So you're just, like,
getting through the area, taking a break...
...on the way to
your dream farm.
Is that a bracelet?
I brought the flower
crown with me.
It'’s funny, because if you open the thing,
you will laugh.
Sort of the same thing
that you're carrying there.
The first shoot I did,
taking people out to the desert...
...gave me the idea to
make a big project out of...
...different characters
living in trailer parks.
Trying to find love.
Trying to understand the world.
Make sense out of the world.
The sun's already gone.
Shit.
Maybe the face after.
Don't look at me.
Yeah, that's good.
Keep doing what you're doing.
I'm just going to both of you.
"Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!"
For me the essence of
my work is telling stories.
A little bit further down
with the head towards me.
Yeah,
looking more into the camera.
Living out your desires,
fantasies.
Building a new world...
...which is far away
from the regular world.
One morning I didn't wake up.
I was worn out, I had a fever.
I fell asleep again
and I dreamed.
My chest felt squeezed.
Certainly it is because of the close-fitting
elastic bandages it is wrapped in.
A little bird said
morning for her love.
The frozen wind crept on up her.
The freezing stream below. There
was no leaf upon the forest bower...
...no flowers upon the ground
and little motion in the air...
...except for the
mill wing's sound.
Charlie Brown...
My little movie star. We're going to get you
a little star on the Hollywood Boulevard.
You're going to be the
most famous of all of them.
"Charlie Brown,
here comes Charlie Brown."
Nice.
I think he peed on me.
- Charlie Brown peed on you? No way.
I feel wetness.
On my hand.
I don't see anything.
- I feel it in my hand.
It didn't.
- I feel something wet on my hand.
He might have spit a
little bit on your hand.
No,
it's coming out of him onto my left hand.
Hey, sweetie.
Was it just that?
- OK, I guess it was drool.
I didn't know he'd do that.
I thought it had to be pee.
No,
they don't really pee. They shit.
Since I've been a little girl, I actually
thought: Oh, we wanted to go to America.
In the middle of the desert, in the
middle of nowhere would be wonderful.
But then when I
came to America...
...I just had a
hit-and-run accident.
I was seven years on crutches.
I had thirty operations.
It was pretty hardcore.
That changed my life.
My way of seeing things.
There might be bad
things happening...
...but still you have some
kind of control of them...
...by creating a
world within a world.
This is so cool. I
love this picture.
I love this color explosion.
That looks like little flowers.
All 'problems' of
an expired Polaroid.
Here you get, like,
the chemistry didn't develop anymore...
...and you can see the rollers
while they pushed out the film.
Where you can
see the yellow part.
Those poor girls
really had to work a lot.
I totally embrace
these kind of mistakes.
I think life is unpredictable.
Therefore it's really great that
the films are so unpredictable.
'Wabi-sabi' is a
Japanese term...
...for something
which is imperfect.
But it also means that...
...only things are perfect
which are imperfect.
Like a dish with a chip,
because it tells a story. It has a life.
Perfect.
Love.
Friendship.
Color.
Memories.
Future.
Love.
I really was married to
Polaroid. I started in 1977...
...and left in 2005.
That's 28 years.
Dr. Land,
his last five years with Polaroid...
...were my first five years.
He was clearly a great role model for me
as somebody who knew how to do science.
He knew the value
of doing experiments...
...and would tell you that there's
no such thing as a failed experiment.
To join this adventure,
I had to move to Europe.
It was a pretty major decision,
because it involved...
...leaving my wife for
a good part of this time.
I just couldn't resist.
It was a chance for me to get
back to what I love the most...
...which is work on the
reinvention of instant film.
The importance of dreams.
It is not easy to
grasp this point.
It implies something vague,
unknown, or hidden from us.
Man never perceives anything fully,
or comprehends anything completely.
He can see, hear,
touch and taste...
...but how far he sees,
how well he hears...
...what his touch tells
him and what he tastes...
...depend upon the number
and quality of his senses.
By using scientific
instruments...
...he can partly compensate
for the deficiencies of his senses.
But the most elaborate
apparatus cannot do more...
...than bring distant or small
objects within range of his eyes...
...or make faint
sounds more audible.
No matter what
instrument he uses...
...at some point he reaches
the edge of certainty...
...beyond which conscious
knowledge cannot pass.
There are, moreover, unconscious
aspects of our perception of reality.
It may appear, for instance,
in the form of a dream.
The book just came out of me.
I wrote most of the time
nights and weekends.
In two long train rides,
I wrote about a third of the book.
There days when I wanted to be doing
other things, but I couldn'’t 't stop.
Always a little voice
looking over your shoulder...
...that says: You should be
working on that a little more.
To keep this weird old way
of making pictures going.
The first Polaroid Land camera,
the old 95.
Graduating to a group of a
couple of rangefinder cameras.
Then came the
electric eye models...
...and more recently,
the color pack cameras.
What a product story.
Polaroid photography did have an
enormous effect on popular culture.
It was just everywhere.
There was even a Polaroid
camera on a bad day in 1963.
The president of the
United States is dead.
That is the only photo of the
moment President Kennedy died.
What I love about this camera is that
it allows you to capture the moment.
Every moment in life...
...that you stop and show: this
happened just then and here.
And those are the
moments we want to keep.
A lot of people think of
Polaroid as a snapshot medium...
...but that you would never
use it for something important.
That's really a misapprehension.
A great many photographers have
pushed this medium to the point...
...where it really
showed its ability.
Take a look at this base and
see what kind of quality we have.
OK, that's one. Another one. No,
that's Gen 2.
You can take a picture of me.
Now I'm going to
do Thomas. Gen 3.
In fact in both of them. Looks
like about the same place almost.
Two minutes.
But it should be...
The Gen 3 should,
in a few minutes...
I'm not sure when.
- It might be a little bit cold in this room.
Press a button...
...and have the picture.
Press a button...
...and have the picture.
Now.
There's probably been
thirty or forty new molecules...
...that have been designed and synthesized
and tested to come up with these.
And it's taken two and a half years,
probably a little over two years.
But the Gen 3 should
start to brighten up...
...and move into
its final phase.
It's too slow.
When the Impossible
Film started...
...after a number of years we were
able to put together a very basic recipe...
...that made the
first Impossible films.
I don't call those
instant films.
It's a full half an hour
to get to a finished print.
Press a button...
When an instant print comes out of a
camera, it's also the experience of time.
Press a button...
There's an organic process
that you're pulled into.
You almost want to
continue watching it.
There's a feel of the evolution of time
passed. That's part of the whole experience.
In an instant digital print...
...there was no experience.
No mystery.
No sense of dreaming.
No sense of time.
It's like being put under
with total anesthesia...
...and wake up four hours later.
There's nothing in-between.
There's nothing else.
It's very strange
how time passes.
Most of these people I
just don't know anymore.
No more connections to them.
And you were so close to people
and they just disappear out of your life.
Very, very, very strange.
Gosh, this is a really nice box.
These are really... That's
me when I was small.
My sister, my grandmother,
mother, my great-grandmother.
That's a very long time ago.
No Polaroids back then.
Me in Cuxhaven growing up. On the beach,
basically.
Me taking my first bath.
Oh my God,
I was looking for these photos.
For years I've been looking
for one particular photo album...
...with all my old student photos
and my childhood passports.
This is basically... This
batch is how I grew up.
I'm going through my life.
It's only such
selective little parts.
My past was such
a different time.
Because it was the time
before digital came in.
They are all moments you remember,
but no pictures exist of them.
Our memories are
always somehow faded.
So everybody can project
their own fantasies on the past.
I can't remember
if I chose this life.
I think I must have, but I might
not have known what I was in for.
My family turned
out to be mostly jerks.
My mom says I was
named after the champagne.
My dad likes to say I was
named after his product.
I had a dog, Lucy.
Born when I was two. She
was just about my only friend.
I got lost in the desert
with her once. Really lost.
I dreamed that I wanted to quit my job
hostessing at this restaurant and I was like:
I was going there to quit
and I was freaking out...
...and then my skin just
kept peeling off of me.
At first I thought
it was sunburn.
But it was all over my face and
I was peeling it off like a mask.
I felt like a new person as I was taking it
off and I had this fresh skin underneath.
So I went to the...
I didn't tell you this part.
So I went to the restaurant...
...and I saw my friend there.
She was like: Oh,
I'm not happy in school, I want to leave.
And I was like: "If you're not happy,
you have to leave. I had a dream about it."
So I told her in the dream that I had a dream.
- So you had a dream in a dream?
Yeah,
I said I had a dream about it.
"I think it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't
go to school if it doesn't make you happy."
"You have to follow
what your dream is."
So then I left the restaurant
and I was in this café...
...and I was giving this pitch
for this movie I want to make...
...to this woman I
know who's a producer...
...in LA, who's a real person,
and I was giving the pitch to her...
...she was like: "I love this idea.
I want to help you get it made."
And I left there and I was going to tell
my family that I was going to make a movie.
It was really cool. And my skin was
like... It was so weird peeling it off.
I would definitely say that
the world is losing magic.
Today, of course,
everything is covered.
So the way you perceive your
past has completely changed.
That's also why you have a different
memory today, which is instant memory.
I think people are obsessed
with the necessity of moments.
And therefore also this deep
feeling about time has changed.
That is actually what I
don't want to be part of.
And so I'm stopping time...
...and creating my
own time dimension.
We have art and order
not to die of the truth.
That fits so well to my life.
Dining in the Altstadt.
I have a table for two.
I am missing you.
Lily's bar for lunch.
A Weiss bier and nice music.
Beginning to rain.
I find myself at times
inspired to write haiku poetry.
It's like an instant print, which is a
very small, single frozen piece of time.
Hey, Jenn.
Hey, I've been waiting.
You've got something
coming up this weekend, right?
You're getting together
with Cindy on Friday?
Friday's going to be great.
- What are you doing?
The Museum of Fine Arts
has an exhibit of Dutch painters.
Are you kidding?
No, it's just ironic. We saw so
many Dutch paintings together.
That's funny. I just got done talking to
Zach who's been visited this weekend...
...by a woman from Amsterdam
who's a composer that he knows.
I'd love to go to that jazz
festival in Amsterdam.
Actually, it's in Hamburg.
- Do you know what week it is?
I think it's in April,
isn't it? I will look it up.
The other thing I want to do this weekend
is pick out a Christmas tree. Alone, again.
I just talked to Zach and I asked
him to help, like he did last year.
Help you get the
tree and put it up.
Sorry I'm not able
to do that with you.
All right. I probably won't
have time to do a lot of it for you.
I'll see you again at Christmas,
but I'll be looking forward to that.
I'll see you later.
Bye bye, love.
- I love you. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Bye bye. - See you.
Well, there it is.
The Polaroid 1000 instant camera.
The world's simplest camera.
It's the exciting
Christmas present...
...that lets you enjoy your
pictures in minutes in brilliant color.
For instant excitement,
instant laughter...
...instant fun.
This is something Edwin
Land wrote on March 25, 1974:
"When a new medium
comes into our midst...
...we proceed to use it pretty
much as we used older media."
"We could not have known
and I've only just learned...
...that a new kind of relationship
between people in groups...
...is brought into
being by instant film...
...when the members of a group are
photographing and being photographed...
...and sharing the photographs."
"It turns out that
buried within us...
...God knows beneath how many pregenital
and Freudian and Calvinistic strata...
...there is latent
interest in each other."
"There is tenderness, curiosity, excitement,
affection, companionability and humor."
"It turns out in this cold world
where man grows distant from man...
...that we have a prehistoric
tribal competence...
...in being partners in the lonely
exploration of a once-empty planet."
Land really thought that
his invention was a tool...
...that would change the way
people related to one another.
He was extremely
romantic about his creation...
...and quite the idealist.
Can you wrap me the
captions on that file again?
I just want to make two changes
and run it by the fact checker...
...and then we can take it to proof.
That'll be good before the end of the day.
Thanks. I'll get them
back to you in ten minutes.
That's a silly pose.
Can you look at me?
Let me see.
I like that one better.
You're smiling a lot more.
I think it really...
I think it really
captures my personality.
You like that one better?
- Yeah. Just my mind wandering.
I think it really
captures my personality.
Yeah, that one's better. You're
making a sort of silly face, though.
Yeah,
but it's the best I can do.
It probably comes out that I
take close to a photo a day of Alex.
Not quite, but pretty nearly.
I hope that it gives him a
way to connect his childhood...
...to something that I was
interested in and writing about.
You know,
he will be one of the last kids...
...to have been
photographed this way.
I've got enough film to last a few
more years, but it's going to dry up soon.
So, he'll be one of the last ones
who remembers how it smelled...
...and how it felt to peel one of
those pictures open and see it.
You know,
when I'm fifty years out of the picture...
...he'll remember
it. That's nice.
It still makes me
laugh looking at it.
Just nine months old,
I guess. Something like that.
And it was Christmas.
Polaroid photography
is social...
...in the way that when
you take an instant picture...
...you pull it out of the camera
and it develops on the spot.
And there's a little time lag. It takes
a minute or two, or three, to happen.
During that time, if the person
you've just taken a picture of...
...doesn't know you well,
if it's a stranger at a party
...or an occasional acquaintance,
you know...
...you're sort of forced to make
small talk to fill in the moment.
The eye is
surprisingly forgiving.
I had a Polaroid executive
say this to me once.
That they're always hung up
on: Is it as good as 35mm quality?
And he said: "Go pick up a newspaper.
You're looking at a bunch of dots."
The eye forgives anything,
if it's a good photograph.
You know that famous
story about Dustin Hoffman...
...and Laurence Olivier
on 'Marathon Man'?
I don't.
Dustin Hoffman would stay up all night,
so he would come in disheveled and dirty.
And Olivier looked
at him once and said:
"My dear boy,
you should try acting. It's much easier."
Are you taking a picture?
For God's sake, I got to reload.
Hang on.
I look a little lazy.
It's Friday night. Lazy is OK.
That's good.
Let's see what we've got.
You know you don't shake?
You know the thing that
celebrities always do?
Where you get the shoulders
square and the hip turned...
...and the arm out. - Square.
That's right. That one. Exactly.
The earlier forms... You
know when you peel them off?
It came off wet.
And you had to
shake it to dry it.
This is a fun one,
'cause it folds.
Isn't it cute?
How do you know these guys?
Hang on. Sorry, the flash didn't go off.
- Oh, no.
How do you know these guys?
Your eye forgives. Look
at a newspaper. It's all dots.
Right, right. - It's all right.
What's this kind of camera?
- This is an SX-70.
Which you can see
in 'Boogie Nights'.
I mean, this is my house, it's my birthday,
all of my friends right here.
That's my wife.
And that's her, like right now.
- That's her two minutes ago.
As you take people's pictures,
people gather around to look at it...
...and ask to have
their picture taken.
So the circle of that moment
widens to a small group.
And then the second
thing that happens...
...is that the photo itself,
because it's a one-of-a-kind object...
...because there's no
digital file or negative...
...gets given to the subject.
This, as far as I know,
is just about unique in photography.
It doesn't happen that
way with any other form.
There won't be digital
files that were transferred...
...from phone to computer, to the
next computer, to the next computer...
...and stored away on
a hard drive somewhere.
Very often,
you will never see the image again.
It's like an artefact of time.
Like a ghost came
out of the machine.
Once, not too long ago, there was a
perfect chemical formula of imperfection.
But then things changed.
A digital image is a stream of dots,
ones and zeros.
An analog instant picture
has three dimensions.
It has thickness...
...and volume.
It weighs something.
I like to describe the
invention to end all inventions.
I call it The Replicator.
It's a duplicating machine that
can make an exact copy of anything.
Confronted with such a device,
our present society would probably...
...sink into a kind of
gluttonous barbarism.
Because everybody would want
unlimited quantities of everything...
...since nothing
would cost anything.
In fact,
cynics may doubt if any human society...
...could survive an invention...
...which would lead to
unlimited abundance...
...and the final ending
of the curse of Adam...
Every human is unique.
It's not an exact replica,
it's not a clone.
The human body that has a
level of chemical complexity...
...and a biochemistry
that is just incredible.
We are trying to modify it...
...but in my opinion,
that is a subjective thing.
It is perfect, but, also,
it is imperfect. All at the same time.
Maybe just... Turn towards the sun
so it's obviously not... Remember?
Exactly. That's
good. That's great.
I ask myself this: Why
did God create us?
What was his purpose?
The world walking by.
I'm watching the reflections
in some sunglasses.
There's a line somewhere.
It's not clearly defined.
We must not cross it.
These are part of the 20 years of work,
but it's only one of the safes.
So we have another one.
So there's 700 in each drawer.
And there are 23 drawers,
by 700.
A great deal of the
secret of our success...
...has been that we have
concentrated on concepts.
That has given us a heavy,
technological weighting...
...that has let us be
years ahead of the field.
The very end has elements of tragedy,
for sure.
Its very success,
in some ways...
...was the thing that made
it fearful about change.
Every time a new environment
forms with a new medium...
...people go back
and live in the old one.
Any new medium completely alters
the image we have of ourselves.
Of this,
you are completely unaware.
Land, although he was
one of the great visionaries...
...was caught in the
wrong time frame.
The limitations of analog media that they
couldn't be shared in volume globally...
...cut him off from the
larger world impact...
...that digital photography
then opened up.
...take a wallet
out of my pocket...
...take a wallet
out of my pocket...
Welcome to the Instant Lab.
You have to choose
an image for exposure.
Do this now.
By the time they realized,
it was too late. It was the mid-Nineties...
...and Sony and the others
were all way ahead of them.
Place your device face
down on the cradle...
...in the top of the tower.
That was the sound of success.
Locate the shutter and
pull it out all the way.
Do this now.
The device will
make the exposure.
Slide the shutter
all the way back.
Press the eject button located
at the front of the Instant Lab...
...firmly for one second.
You have initiated the chemical reactions
that will process your instant photo.
Wait for it.
Thank you for listening and remember:
I can repeat any of my instructions.
The company went bankrupt in
2001. It was sold, and sold again.
That last buyer turned
out to be a crook.
He'd stolen three billion
dollars. He got fifty years.
The factories and the land
under them were sold off.
The one in Waltham I visited.
It was demolished six weeks after I got
there. There's a shopping center there now.
I am on the verge of change.
Because the narratives...
...came to a happy
ending for me.
So everything I was working on
and working through for so long...
...now became reality.
I'm living the dream now.
It seems...
...I want to, like,
see something beyond the image.
To a point where an image
becomes an imagination.
That... See the
land up there? Alex?
That's the beginning
of New Jersey.
And then there's a
long pier over there.
Bapu, my dad, used to, when
he was a little kid, fish off that pier.
He had a really
long fishing pole...
...and go all the way out to the
end and throw his line in the ocean.
You think we can do that someday?
- Sure.
We should ask bapu. The
three of us can go together.
He'd like that and I'd
like that. Want to do it?
We could even go out on a
fishing boat sometime, if you want.
Would you like that? - Cool.
I would love to do that.
Trying to predict the future...
...is a discouraging and
hazardous occupation.
If his predictions sound
at all reasonable...
...you can be quite sure that in 20,
or at most 50 years...
...the progress of
science and technology...
...has made him seem
ridiculously conservative.
On the other hand,
if by some miracle...
...a prophet could describe the future
exactly as it was going to take place...
...his predictions would sound so absurd,
so far-fetched...
...that everybody would
laugh him for scorn.
There's an interesting
quote from Arthur C. Clarke...
...that I think
really applies to us:
"The only way of discovering
the limits of the possible...
...is to venture a little way
beyond and into the impossible."
It's my own opinion that when
it comes to future directions...
...we can learn an awful lot from
visionaries and people like Dr. Land.
To show us possibilities
and which way to go...
...beyond what most of
us would be conceiving of.
People who have this passion
to develop technologies...
...that nobody had
even imagined...
...and continue to keep dreaming
of what human nature is...
...and what it eventually
becomes in the future.
Not too bad.
Very good. Think it will survive
two cats and a grandbaby?
I think it will.
Merry Christmas.
- You look handsome.
Watch the film. - OK, sir.
That's going to be a great shot.