10/22/14 RICHARD TUOHY: HAND CRAFTED CINEMA

Program:

+ IRON-WOOD 2009, 7 minuets, 16mm
Iron-wood is an abstract visual exploration of the deeply fissured 'cog-like' bark of the Australian tree Eucalyptus Sideroxylon - Red Ironbark.

+ FLYSCREEN 2010, 8 minutes, 16mm
Flyscreen is a camera-less ‘rayogram’ film, made by layering fly-screen material onto raw 16mm film stock and then exposing to light. The sound heard is the optical sound of the images passing the 16mm optical sound head.

+ SEOUL ELECTRIC 2012, 7 minutes, 16mm
A North Asian metropolis. Electricity wires draped like thick webs adorn the street scape. Explosive sparks of colour electrify the frame. Filmed in Seoul in black and white. Colourised during processing using coloured torch light.

+ TREE LINES 2009, 7 minutes, 16mm
High country, high contrast. A collision of lines and patterns from the wood of burnt trees.

+ GINZA STRIP 2014, 9 minutes, 16mm
The Ginza of fable and memory. This is the first film I have finished using the 'chromaflex' technique that we developed. This is a very much hands on colour developing procedure that allows selected areas of the film to be colour positive, colour negative, or black and white.

+ ETIENNE'S HAND 2011, 13 minutes, 16mm
A movement study of a restless hand. Made from one five second shot. Sound constructed from an old French folk tune played on a hand cranked music box.

+ BLUE LINE CHICAGO 2014, 10 minutes, 16mm
Architectural distortions of the second city.

+ DOT MATRIX 2013, 16 minutes, 2 x 16mm
Dot Matrix is dual 16mm film involving two almost completely overlapping projected images. The ‘dots’ were produced by photogramming sheets of dotty paper (used for manga illustrations) directly onto raw 16mm film stock. These dots were then contact printed with ‘flicker’ (alternating black frames) creating strobing 'interruptions' to the dots. The drama of the film emerges in the overlap of the two projected images of dots. The product they make
is greater than the parts. The sounds heard are those that the dots themselves produce as they pass the optical sound head of the 16mm projector.

  

"While many commercial film labs are shutting there doors, a counter movement is taking place in the form of the international network of artist-run film labs. The Australian experimental filmmaker Richard Tuohy – a prominent figure in this cinematic d-i-y turn -- sees this new phase for the traditional media as an opportunity; as a chance for the film artist to directly engage with the once inaccessible, now too often discarded tools of the traditional film lab.

Tuohy's hand crafted cinema presents us with multiple visual manipulations in camera, in printer techniques, in experimental processing procedures and in projection to sculpt an activated and reanimated reality which collectively represent a distinctively cinematic experience. More visual then cerebral, these pictures move, and with an energy unique to film. While covering a range of techniques, strategies and visual themes, they each share the same tenacious unfolding of a set of abstract possibilities from out of singular visual ideas. This program presents eight hand-processed and d-i-y printed 16mm film works from the artists 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."

This program features a selection of his work from the past ten years, illustrating both Tuohy’s resourcefulness and versatility, and the inexhaustible, ever-surprising potential of Super-8mm and 16mm film.