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

Experimenting with Animated Sound in Super 16

This is the new K3 setup for animating sound in the expanded image area. I am experimenting with how text that is layered and fattened can work as a variable area sound track when animated into the side of the wider super 16 frame area. Strips of text are cut and arranged so that the ascenders and descenders created a variable area between the lines.

 Text strips spiced onto a 16mm reel

The text is layered from Baudrillard's "System of Objects"

The text moves upward or downward in the narrow area on the right side of the template.
My first roll is still in the camera. I still need 2000 more images. Results some time next week.

Since Last Fall

Since Last Fall

ANYEYE has been growing internally since last summer's film series. There have been a number of ongoing projects worth paying attention to. The Random Orphan Film series has morphed into a Pop-Up series which will be happening in June. We will be on the road in July with a presentation at the Marblehead Arts Festival. This past fall we made a silent film presentation in Brian Pellinen's History of Film Class at Endicott College's Boston Campus.
Other project updates;
There are two pieces of equipment that are being developed for the lab. An contact printer has been built from a motorized sync block with an LED light source. Also, a simple optical printer has been built from an old Keyston projector linked to a Bolex with an time-lapse motor. The projector is driven by an arduino controlled stepper motor. There are a few details to work out but preliminary tests show that the device works quite well. pictures to follow.
We have been building an equipment base that could support next fall's film class at Montserrat. To this end we have acquired two Bolex Rex 3 cameras and a Kraznogorsk Super 16 camera from the Ukraine.

ANYEYE Fall Silent Film Series Begins Friday 9/26

The Fall Silent Film Series begin this Friday with Buster Keaton's "The General"
The General is a 1926 American silent comedy film released by United Artists. Inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, which happened in 1862, the film stars Buster Keaton who co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman. It was adapted by Al Boasberg, Bruckman, Keaton, Paul Girard Smith (uncredited) and Charles Henry Smith (uncredited) from the memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger.

Because of its then-huge budget ($750,000 supplied by Metro chief Joseph Schenck) and failure to turn a significant profit, Keaton lost his independence as a filmmaker and was forced into a restrictive deal with MGM. In 1956, the film entered thepublic domain (in the USA) due to the claimant's failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.^[2]

The film has been reevaluated, and is now considered by critics as one of thegreatest films ever made. In 2007, The General was ranked #18 by theAmerican Film Institute on their 10th Anniversary list of the 100 best American movies of all time.^[3]

Friday September 26, 7:30 pm.

Hardie Screening Room

In the basement of the Hardie Building

23 Essex St.

Beverly, MA