A post from back in 2020

This is an older post but it is interesting to see my reaction to Covid.

 I have not posted since January 15th 2020. I mentioned at the time that ANYEYE Film Lab had been to Colorado, Berlin Germany, and Nantes France. Being amazed at where my films had taken me.

A lot has happened since then. There has been a shift in things. Fear and caution have all but replaced curiosity and confidence. Travel is restricted, gatherings are restricted and interaction is now primarily over video conference calls. An opportunistic virus has brought our capitalist system to a standstill. At least the retail part of it. It seems odd, maybe ironic that a microbe could do this.
Memes are birthing and spreading as well. This has been the most depressing part of the three month experience. I do not feel like we are all in this together. Nor do I want to be a hero. I just want to be able to communicate in full sentenced with body language and gestures in real time and space.
I have taken on the task of renovating a two car garage. I want to turn it into a studio office space and make room for our 4 year old step grandson to have a room of his own.

The garage looks like this so far.

An earlier post from 2013

This is the seventh year of the ANYEYE blog. Since that time ANYEYE has been to France, Germany, Colorado, This cities of New York, Buenos Aires, London, and Barcelona. The film world has expanded to include film labs like us in Latvia, Australia, Mexico, and right nearby in Waltham.

Toronto

I just returned from a trip to Toronto. I had participated in a 5 day Film Labs meeting sponsored by L.I.F.T.  https://lift.ca/analogue-resilience-film-labs-gathering/

Two film world colleagues and I stayed in and Air B&B on the west side in a part of Toronto called "The Junction". We walked and talked a lot and spent much of time in discussion and at the events, seeing films and attending workshops.

I was inspired by the number of young people who have been drawn to analog film making. They brought a very broad range of skills and sensibilities to the event.

There was a clear focus on the environmental impact of photochemical processes and ways to mediate that impact. There were also presentations on DIY technical solutions to projection, sound production, and optical printing. High energy at every event.

I am really reassured at these meetings (Colorado Springs, Nantes, Berlin), how much alive the photochemical process is and how much it is expanding to include new technologies and processes.  I am encouraged that even though I may be somewhat isolated here in the burbs than there are artists from all over the world who are immersed in this form of image making.

ARTOMI in Ghent NY

On my way to Colgate in Hamilton NY. I stopped at ARTOMI, an large artpark in Ghent, NY. I spent an hour and a half and walked about three miles around the ground and still only saw about 1/3 of what is installed there.

Decided to break up the drive to Hamilton NY by stopping in  Chatham NY just across the MA/NY border.Staying in a small Airbnb outside of town and wanted to go "into town" for dinner.

Found the Blue Plate Restaurant right in the middle of town. Actually next to the railroad tracks. 

Good dinner in the restored bar in the basement. 

I will be visiting ArttOMI  in the town of Ghent NY tomorrow before I continue up to the Flaherty

Going to the Flaherty Seminars on Saturday

The legendary Flaherty is the meeting point for the political, poetical, experimental, Critical  and cultural world of Documentary films. I read about it all of the time and have done what I think is a good amount of homework in my narrow band of interest in Experimental Documentary.
I know that the contemporary realm of documentary is in flux just like the other worlds that I travel in. My intention is to be open and curious but not uncritical.

I am driving to Colgate where it is held and I look forward to an introspective two-day journey. I will stop in Chatham NY which is one of the primary locations of the first film I worked on back in 1971. We camped out in the Shaker Museum there to shoot interiors for an Historical drama aimed at Bicentennial release. It never happened as we had planned (long story) and we sold the negative footage, work print and the rough cut and the film is somewhere in California.

So I go back in time as I go west. Arrive in the NOW and bathe in the moment.

Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie are coming to ANYEYE at Montserrat in June

Australian film makers Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie will be at the ANYEYE film lab at Montserrat College of Art from June 22 until June 24th. They will be conducting a 3 day workshop that will focus on direct film making using a salvaged 16mm contact printer. Since a lot of 16mm equipment is being discarded as the film industry has shifted towards video production, Small film labs have sprung in different parts of the world to gather and begin using the equipment in new and creative ways. ANYEYE is one of those.

Richard is a film maker who has become sort of an expert on these devices which are used to make one-to one-copies of 16mm films.
Dianna Barrie is an accomplished film maker who works with Richard on a variety of hand processed and experimentally inspired short films. Together they have done workshops in Barcelona, Riga Latvia, Vienna, Rotterdam, Paris, Berlin, Colorado Springs, Toronto  and in Boston as well.

Here is text from a recent screening in Toronto;

As the film industry sheds much of its traditional machinery, Tuohy and other like him are scavenging these technological leftovers, giving them new life in the growing artist run film labs movement, and discovering new possibilities and techniques that had been largely out of reach for an earlier generation of film experimenters. Tuohy refers to such lab-working filmmakers as coming from the school of 'dirty hands'; where the filmmaker really gets their hands into the nitty-gritty of film. Tuohy sees this change as an opportunity, indeed as a kind of liberation for the experimental filmmaker—allowing experimentation in areas that previously were too often a costly mystery kept in the hands of professionals. This program presents six hand-processed and DIY printed 16mm film works from Tuohy's recent output. The films, though diverse, are all highly abstract and tightly structured and share a fascination with the visual possibilities of basic traditional film technology.

Richard Tuohy is one of the most active experimental film artists currently working on celluloid in Australia. His film Iron-Wood won first prize (ex aequo) at the 2009 International Abstract Cinema Exhibition (ABSTRACTA) in Rome. He runs Nanolab in Australia—the specialist small gauge film processing laboratory. He actively encourages other artists to work with cine film through his Artist Film Workshop initiative. In 2006 he and his partner started Nanolab as an artist run film laboratory offering super 8 processing.

And also a link to an interview:

Also; see this interview with Richard;
http://ortodossiafotografica.blogspot.com/2017/02/richard-tuohy-and-diana-berrie-two.html