The once ubiquitous gauge for documentary makers, wildlife cameramen, animators, amateur filmmakers and auteurs is being phased out, the British-born, Berlin-based Dean explains. It is more than a personal crisis, she says. It is a cultural catastrophe.

"I'm in a situation where soon, I will not be able to see my own work," Dean says. "It staggers me that the world seems happy to get rid of film."

Industry investment and research has been directed almost exclusively to digital formats over the past 20 years, "for cynical financial reasons", says Dean. "It all comes down to it being cheaper and easier to control."

The three major manufacturers of motion picture equipment - Aaton, ARRI and Panavision - have all ceased making film cameras. Processing laboratories are closing worldwide. Fujifilm ended the manufacture of most of its film formats in 2013. Kodak has recently discontinued several lines of product critical to filmmakers and artists.

"Kodak have even stopped making the black leader you need for negative cutting, and once it's gone, I can't make my work any more," says Dean. "I bought the last 16 rolls of it."

Some of that precious stock will be used up in the making of Dean's new project, Event for a Stage, co-commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Carriageworks. It is her first live performance work.

"But in no way is this a move into theatre. I have no experience of theatre - none at all. I don't even go to the theatre, but I wanted to make a film of an actor on a stage."

She is reluctant to say much more about it. "If I tell you anything about it, I've told you everything about it," she says. "All you need to know is that I'm an outsider. This is about the concept of artifice on the stage. It's not about theatre or film and television acting."

The actor on Dean's stage is Stephen Dillane, the British-born Tony Award-winner known to many for his role as Lord Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones. The process so far has been "very challenging", he says.

"I was attracted to the project because it seemed like a different world," says Dillane. "But … it's still a complete mystery. Over the next week I'll either find out what it is, or be able to be on stage happily without knowing."

Dean's camera assistants will be on stage, too. "The whole thing is a bit of a self portrait of how I make a film," Dean says. "This way of making a film is now so endangered and so instrumental to how the final work is made. I'm exposing it."

Dean says she isn't against digital filmmaking per se. "But film is made with light, it's physical, it's chemical and because it happens in the camera, all the decisions are imprinted on it. In digital film, you make a template and pass it down the production line.''

Lost too is the element of serendipity, Dean says.

"I'm an artist and I court chance … sometimes you get a miracle. You can't get miracles in digital."

Event for a Stage will be at Carriageworks, May 1-4.