This mechanical gem, manufactured in the 60’s by the French firm of André Debrie, is a step printer for black and white film. Its basic function is to print both 16mm copies from a 16mm original negative by contact or reduce a 35mm original to a 16mm format by an optical process.

In Mires’ lab, the Debrie Tipro has been so far used or lovingly « misused » in various ways (« creative » colour prints using filters – the machine was originally conceived for B&W prints – multiple exposure works using film loops as originals, found footage including 35mm to 16 mm reductions…). However there are still some technical mysteries as to the workings of the Debrie Tipro, which we need to clarify…

We were lucky to spent 5 days dedicated to our Debrie contact printer, for a masterclass led by Franco Bosco and Rafael Marques, from ANIM, the laboratory of Cinemateca Portugesa.

Here's a report of the work done during the Debrie contact printer masterclass

The artist and film maker Els van Riel spend 3 weeks in Nantes to work with the contact printer. As a report, Els van Riel gave us her residency's journal. It shows how she worked in the lab with this machine and how she started a new project based on it.

Journal - by Els van Riel

Images resulting from the workshops led by Aurélie Percevault and Carole Thibaud from Mire.

With art students :

Introduction workshop (for general audience) :

A user manual including photos, videos and text.

Debrie Tipro Tutorial