Hold Your Own: Fav Film School Road Trip Cuba Pics by Jonathan Canlas

Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. You had me up against the wall of the upper limits, feeling desire for togetherness, estimating new thoughts, letting out monster anxieties and god good relief with wherever you are there you are old thoughts, new takes, city with stars showing at night. Something fractal something happy and most things easy.

Viñales had me falling in love with life, Havana you! With your late night glow and me and my sister forgetting anyone else existed at 4 am howling. New and old friends, my Jon brother, film, food, horses! the sun, photography, the sound of laughter.

Aesthetic pics yes, but also the ascetic micro of letting oneself love, rich and dripping like lobster tails in oily red sauce and yucca cooked over pork fat fires, vegetarians salivating. To speak truth through pyramids, to watch and be watched, to let the tobacco bury you- to sing and dance and wear red.

Trip: Film School Road Trip: Havana Cuba February 2025.

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As seen by, and shared with permission of Jonathan Canlas

Film dev & scan by The Find Lab

Hold Your Own

When time pulls lives apart
Hold your own

When everything is fluid, and when nothing can be known with any certainty
Hold your own

Hold it 'til you feel it there
As dark, and dense, and wet as earth
As vast, and bright, and sweet as air
When all there is
Is knowing that you feel what you are feeling
Hold your own

Ask your hands to know the things they hold
I know the days are reeling past in such squealing blasts
But stop for breath and you will know it's yours
Swaying like an open door when storms are coming
Hold

Time is an onslaught
Love is a mission
We work for vocation until
In remission
We wish we'd had patience and given more time to our children

Feel each decision that you make
Make it, hold it
Hold your own
Hold your lovers
Hold their hands
Hold their breasts in your hands, like your hands were their bras
Hold their face in your palms like a prayer
Hold them all night, feel them hold back
Don't hold back
Hold your own

Every pain
Every grievance
Every stab of shame
Every day spent with a demon in your brain giving chase
Hold it

Know the wolves that hunt you
In time, they will be the dogs that bring your slippers
Love them right and you will feel them kiss you when they come to bite
Hot snouts digging out your cuddles with their bloody muzzles
Hold

Nothing you can buy will ever make you more whole
This whole thing thrives on us feeling always incomplete
And it is why we will search for happiness in whatever thing it is we crave in the moment
And it is why we can never really find it there
It is why you will sit there with the lover that you fought for
In the car you sweated years to buy
Wearing the ring you dreamed of all your life
And some part of you will still be unsure that this is what you really want
Stop craving
Hold your own

But if you're satisfied with where you're at, with who you are
You won't need to buy new make-up, or new outfits, or new pots and pans
To cook new exciting recipes
For new exciting people
To make yourself feel like the new exciting person, you think you're supposed to be

Happiness, the brand, is not happiness
We are smarter than they think we are
They take us all for idiots
But that's their problem
When we behave like idiots
It becomes our problem

So hold your own
Breathe deep on a freezing beach
Taste the salt of friendship
Notice the movement of a stranger
Hold your own
And let it be
Catching

Hold Your Own by Kae Tempest

Rafael San Juan's Primavera in Havana, Cuba

I was obsessed with her, craning my neck as we flew by her. This is “Primavera” by Raphael San Juan. It’s 26’ tall and was made of reclaimed found metal as a tribute to the sensuality and strength of Cuban women.

Film Notes:

During my first 2022 visit to Havana with Jon Canlas and The Film School Road Trip Matthew and I shot a lot of film. Having shot digital images almost exclusively whilst being intrigued and intimidated by film, our trip offered a deep dive into film. 3 days of shooting in the rich visual landscape of Havana and Vinales along with Jon’s break-neck shooting pace offered an opportunity in an inspiring, stimulating set and setting to experiment with film, settings, cameras, lenses, etc.

In post-processing I realized my Bronica had a focusing problem leading to many many near-misses where in-camera I’d seen sharp, beautifully composed images. Painful learning costs are the way and actually give these fresh, sharp, beauties of this sculpture a BINGO precious feel.

Film: Kodak Gold box rated pushed 1 stop in developing

Development & scanning: Standard Scans via The Find Lab on the Noritsu scanner

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

-Dylan Thomas

Gygi on Film

Snowy drive, hot drinks, a winter walk to the meadow with Gygi. A lil talking, a lil crying, a little screaming in the trees.

These last few years Gygi and I have both lost our parents, connected already, we’ve seen each other deeper as we’ve stumbled at the threshhold of death and experienced the strange rebirth that has come in its wake. Her deep presence. Her deep love of life. The way she inspires me to be. I love you Gygi.

Film notes:

Very foggy, snowy day- first snow. Shot rated at 200 pushed a stop on the Rolleiflex 6001.

Film notes:

Camera: Rolleiflex 6001 w 80 mm lens

Film: Portra 800 rated at 200 pushed 1 stop in development. So that means the ISO is set to 200 and then in development you do this THIS which adds a dollar to the cost. WORTH IT.

Lab: Standard scans at The Find Lab Scan with borders on Frontier

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