How a Nikon photographer made a film for a museum

Sébastien Van Malleghem

Sébastien Van Malleghem spent years as a photojournalist, working mostly in black and white. For the 200th anniversary of photography, he made a colour film about a place that doesn't exist.

Hangar, the photography museum in Brussels, put out an open call for the bicentenary under the theme "Reinventing Photography." Sébastien's answer was to change his own practice instead of the medium: "I felt that I could never claim to reinvent photography itself. However, I could try to reinvent my own practice." He was one of five Belgian photographers selected for a group show alongside fifteen from France. His was the only entry with an AI film.

Real photographs, made in the physical world

He travelled to Madeira and the Azores and shot in colour, in landscapes far from the ones he usually photographs. Eight of those pictures hang at Hangar as 80 × 120 cm prints. He is plain about what they are: "These are real photographs, made in the physical world."

The film is the other half of the room. Visitors walk through the dark past the eight prints, toward a screen at the far end where the film plays. One half of the room was shot on location. Every frame of the other half was generated.

The room at Hangar: V projected on the far wall beside two prints, with more of Sébastien's photographs along the side wall.

A full film crew

Sébastien had wanted to direct for a long time. What stopped him was the crew: "I never felt ready to take on the scale, logistics and responsibility of a full film crew." AI gave him a way to make a film on his own, and to film things he could never stand in front of with a camera.

He took the idea to François, a creative director at the BBC in London who signs his work as Fraw. François joined as co-director. From June they worked on it between London and Finland, building the look of the film, writing prompts and cutting sequences.

A Porsche on an island at night

The film is called V and runs six minutes. A man drives a vintage Porsche 911 at night across an Atlantic island modelled on Madeira and the Azores, and meets strange, heavily styled figures along the road. Its references are psychological cinema, fashion imagery and night photography, the last of these the closest to Sébastien's own work.

Underneath it is a photographer's question: "what is a photograph when its light, atmosphere and emotional power feel real, but its subject may never have existed?"

A shot from V, the Porsche on the coastal road at dusk, projected beside two of Sébastien's prints.

Starting from the photographs

The canvas opens on a board of Sébastien's own pictures from the islands, labelled as originals: portraits, a burning roadside, forest, sea. Those photographs are where the film's shots begin.

A FLORA board titled Original images, holding Sébastien's photographs from Madeira and the Azores.

A woman photographed on a cliff in a white vest becomes a figure standing on a wet coastal road at dusk, then a close-up, then a tighter close-up with a cigarette at her lip. A real fire on a roadside becomes a fire in the middle of the island's road, with the sea behind it.

On the canvas, a portrait photograph feeds a sequence of generated frames: a woman on a road, a jacketed version, and two close-ups.

One of Sébastien's photographs of a burning roadside beside the generated shot it became: fire on a coastal road at dusk.

The canvas is laid out like the edit: Part 1, Part 2 A and Part 2 B, the transitions between them, and a board at the bottom called Graveyard for shots that didn't make the cut.

Motion came last, and it came tightly briefed. Each move was written as a pair of frames for FLORA's agent: "Each node is one continuous camera move between two frames, and I will join the three clips myself." The agent set up three Kling clips, wide to man, man to woman, woman to close-up, and Sébastien and François cut them together.

FLORA's agent setting up three Kling clips from a written brief of first and last frames.

A lot to learn

V was made in FLORA by two people on two accounts, right up to the museum deadline. Sébastien doesn't pretend it came easily: "There has been a lot to learn, and the process has been challenging at times, but the platform has become an important part of our workflow and visual development." The wall label at Hangar says the same thing in fewer words: images, sound, voices and music generated with AI tools on FLORA, based on photographs taken by Sébastien Van Malleghem.

It feels unlimited

V opened at Hangar in September in front of about 650 people. The show may travel to Paris in 2027, and the pair are cutting a longer version for AI film festivals.

Visitors at the opening of the exhibition at Hangar, Brussels.

Ten days before the opening, with the film nearly finished, Sébastien wrote: "It has been a new kind, and unique artistic experience and it feels unlimited."