"As a film format 16mm is quintessentially 'vintage': it has a softness of definition and a quality of colour saturation that bespeak a bygone age that is presumed to be kinder and gentler - perhaps because many of us are looking back on imperfectly remembered childhoods. Compared to today's HD-everything, 16mm is aestheticized, it is a romanticising filter that Instagrammers aspire to.

'Chapters One to Five' is the third film in the Astrid series 2010-14. The series features the young Astrid Everall, between the ages of seven and eleven. Astrid is seen engaging in wholesome craft activities: cutting out shapes from coloured papers and suspending them as mobiles. She operates in interiors re-constructed from 1970s home improvement magazines, and the tone is something between Blue Peter and Steiner School: idealised, creative, clean and purposeful. The Tate press release says that 'Michael stages a contemporary projection of lost times and youth', begging the question 'whose lost times and youth?'

In the flattened chronology of the online world, in which visual signifiers of any style, school or movement you care to mention are only a few clicks away, and culture cannibalises itself in ever shorter feedback loops, nostalgia as a concept is something wide open for re-definition."
- Caroline Douglas, Director Contemporary Art Society, in review of Art Now: Sophie Michael, July 2016


"This is the third film in the Astrid series 2010-14, made with the young Astrid Everall over the ages of seven to eleven. Astrid responds to different sets that re-construct interiors from 1950s Charles and Ray Eames designs to 1970s home improvement magazines. It takes inspiration from educational materials and re-enacts demonstration films made at that time, depicting and promoting an idealistic lifestyle. Indulging in a sense of nostalgia, in a similar way to a piece of repro-furniture which imitates a past style, Michael stages a contemporary projection of lost times and youth."
- Elsa Coustou, Assistant Curator Tate Britain, 2016