To many of us Super-eighters, a Kodachrome cartridge is just a square shaped plastic block that somehow records our beautiful images. Most of us aren't too bothered about how they do it - as long as they work. A couple of weeks after dumping the irreplaceable material into a post box, a little yellow packet drops onto your door-mat and inside on a black plastic spool are the images you've been waiting for. But where did it go? Who was entrusted with the solemn duty of hatching your precious memories? The Kodachrome process is almost a legend - your images embarking on a voyage to a place where the chrysalis that is your exposed cartridge goes through some weird metamorphosis, some rite of passage, and then returns again, like the prodigal son to your doorstep, in a totally new guise.

To uncover the secret world of the Kodachrome cartridge, I embarked on a voyage of discovery with fellow Super8 filmmaker Michael Parfitt. Super8 has been a part of Michael's life for over twenty years, and his visceral emotions and memories make him well qualified to pick up the story from here on.

Altered States
Inside the Kodachrome Laboratory
Lausanne, Switzerland - home of Kodak's last outpost of Super8 processing. For me, Kodachrome colours are everywhere here. Like many of my generation, my long-standing fascination with the moving image has its origins not only in TV but in small-gauge film formats - my family's archive stretches back to before the second world war.

To enter the last Super8 Kodachrome laboratory in the world is actually a strangely reassuring experience. Paranoia about a faceless Kodak swiftly evaporates - and to meet Monsieur Gloor, lab supervisor and company employee for the past thirty years, is positively enervating. This man has an almost childlike enthusiasm for the Kodachrome process, and it's infectious. As we follow him through a tangle of stainless steel tubes and pressure gauges, he manages to convey something that I find difficult to express. His intimacy with the place gives us a sense of history - I am constantly aware of the nearness of art amongst all this science, and the interdependence of the two. The dance of chemicals is astonishing - some of them never need replacing since levels are replenished constantly, retrieved from the surface of the film as it passes through the processing tanks. This ceaseless exchange of atoms and molecules excites the mind with the thought of millions of film-makers unknowingly contributing, in an extraordinary way, to each others' movies.

We are led up a short, winding, light-restrictive passage into the tank room. "This..." announces Monsieur Gloor with a note of pride, "...is the last operational Kodachrome Super8 processor in the world."...