Film Weekly · Issue 100

A Boarding Pass to the World

For a long stretch of history, film was the only way to record the real world. People projected everything they experienced onto a small square coated in silver halide, where it froze into a moment, ordinary or great.

Years on, images have outgrown their physical vessel, and AI keeps blurring the line between the virtual and the real. Yet a few people remain obsessed with exposing, developing and fixing pictures on that same small square, trying by the most primitive means left to find their original connection to the world.

When Film Weekly started, the goal was to build an open, level platform: a place where people who keep creating on film could show their work, talk about it, and be recognized for it.

Loving something needs no technical justification; being good has nothing to do with fame or titles.

Publishing the weekly call, building voting links, editing each issue: it all took time. Work got censored, fake entries appeared, votes got rigged. But everyone's enthusiasm and anticipation carried us through: two years, one hundred issues, thousands of fine film photographs shown together with their makers and the stories behind them. We learned a great deal about film ourselves along the way. We coveted more than a few cameras, came to know the character of stock after stock, and filled our bookmarks with lab pages…

Today, as Film Weekly crosses into its 100th issue, we are announcing a partnership with Neo Analog Lab, bringing this small platform in front of the whole world. Film lovers everywhere will now compete on the same stage, sharing their reading of each week's theme, presenting their work, and casting their votes. More importantly, we will bring outstanding film photographers and their work to the world: a bigger stage, and encouragement from every corner of it.

The world may have borders; the pursuit of beauty has none. Someday one of your frames may move a stranger across the ocean. They will search for your camera, load the same film, and try to make a picture of their own. And the world will have one more good seed planted in it.

Nothing would honor Film Weekly more.