COMPUTER CHESS

35mm print from the Chicago Film Society, with Andrew Bujalski in person!

Preceded By

sitrep

Director: Blair Barnes
Release Year: 2026  |
Country: U.S.  |
Run Time: 17 mins  |
Format: DCP

Los Angeles premiere with Blair Barnes in person!

We are excited to have filmmaker Andrew Bujalski and L.A.-based artist Blair Barnes in conversation following a short-and-feature pairing of SITREP and COMPUTER CHESS, the latter screening from a 35mm archival print. Both films were shot on the Sony AVC 3260, an analog tube video camera developed in the early 1970s which has a strangely beautiful black-and-white aesthetic, its shallow focus occasionally disrupted by blooms and smears of errant light. The filmmakers will discuss their distinctive approaches and inspirations behind using this idiosyncratic camera following the screening.

Special thanks to Malkah Manuel (Lunette Films) and Julian Antos (Chicago Film Society).

From Blair Barnes

“COMPUTER CHESS was released in 2013, after being filmed entirely on three Sony AVC 3260’s which were custom-fitted with an extra BNC outlet to make a stable, recorded image possible. Ultimately, one of the 3260’s was the main workhorse, as the 2:1 signal in the other two were less reliable. [DoP] Matthias Grunsky would describe the camera as having a “…transcendental character,” which endures as a representation of the Sony AVC 3250. SITREP, which will be making its debut in 2026, uses the 3250 as its foremost camera, with the Sony FX6 as the digital intermediary. Filmed almost entirely inside of an abandoned dialysis center, the project makes work of worldbuilding through encompassing tape loops and mismatches in frequency and frame rate to produce varied flicker lines, whereas COMPUTER CHESS transforms a murky hotel into uncanny chess tournament sprawl. Beyond Bujalski’s precision in nailing the period, the 3260 itself is an apt co-conspirator in slipping the piece into an idiosyncratic otherworld.

“The common denominator is the ⅔ inch tube. The evident draw is in the utility of the tube camera, and it is also in how these projects use inverse methods to speak to time, whether as a phonetic marker in sitrep, or an approximation of period in COMPUTER CHESS. There is also chronological resonance with the 1969 AVC 3260 being used in 2013, and its successor, the 1974 AVC 3250 being used in 2025.” – Blair Barnes