As film processing labs worldwide shutter their doors and halt their activities, rumors abound of the end of celluloid filmmaking. Undaunted by apocalyptic visions of an all-digital media dystopia, Australian filmmaker Richard Tuohy—a prominent figure in the burgeoning international network of DIY-inspired “artist-run film labs”—is an infectiously optimistic master of the hand-made film. Using elaborately creative experimentation with laboratory processes and film mechanics, Tuohy’s works abound with such techniques as time-lapse photography, single-frame filmmaking, multiple exposure photography, extensive printing techniques, alternative chemical processes, direct cameraless filmmaking and more. This screening presents an exciting and inspiring array of these dazzling works, including the optical/audible rayogram work Flyscreen; the hand-colorized Korean streetscape Seoul Electric; Ginza Strip, a positive/negative/color/black-and-white “chromoflex” film; the flickering, strobing two-projector work Dot Matrix; the three-projector piece Horizontals and more. (Steve Polta/Richard Tuohy)

My films have been described rather nicely as “earth animations” and “landscape dances.” The connotations of both these descriptions appeal to me. I like to see my approach as a kind of cine-cubism: attending to and abstracting certain features from my subject through making temporal and graphic associations without resorting to a prosaic depiction. I use formal structures to cut out (or rather, “abstract” out) what I see as the “fleshiness” of the particular. While often originating with images from nature, my films are at base about form, structure, time and pattern, rather than about content in any direct sense. Ultimately, they are more about “looking” than “thinking.”—Richard Tuohy

presented in association with Cinema Arts at The ExploratoriumAdmission: $10 general/ $5 members