Filament #1: A Conversation With Andrew Tamburrino

A conversation with the DC-based projectionist, preservationist, and experimental filmmaker.

Last week, I had a brief chat with Andrew Tamburrino, whose short film Spring Forth screened on September 27 at A Night of Moving Images, a showcase of experimental films from the DMV that I organized at Rhizome DC. Andrew is a DC-based filmmaker. He wears many hats, also working as a projectionist and preservationist while shooting experimental films in his spare time. We discussed his sources of inspiration and creative process, as well as his experiences working in a film lab and in the projection booth.

If you could just briefly say your name and introduce yourself, that would be great.

Sure. My name's Andrew Tamburrino. I am a local hobbyist filmmaker of sorts, but I also kind of work more broadly in film. I work at Colorlab as a preservation technician and project manager. And I'm also a projectionist at the AFI Silver and at the National Gallery of Art. So I kind of I hit a lot of the filmmaking… I'm in it a lot of different ways around the city, which has been very, very nice and very fruitful.

I saw you post on Instagram a photo of Gregory Markopoulos’s Eniaios, and I was wondering what the context for the photo was. Were you involved in restoring it?

Yeah. So this past edition, the 2024 edition, we worked on. It's done in cycles, and this edition was XV through XIX, I believe, or XIV through XVIII. But I worked with Robert Beavers in getting new intermediates made from the originals and then subsequent prints that could be screened during the festival in Greece. So that was a really wonderful opportunity. I'm very sad I didn't get to attend the festival, but from everything I've heard, it was magical as always.

I've always wanted to go. I think I must have heard about it as recently as, like, two or three years ago. And I was wondering when the next edition would be. And I just assumed it would be in another four years. But it looks like they're back on cycle now.

Yeah. I had asked Robert, you know, because it was supposed to be 2020. COVID obviously put a wrench into things there. So they jumped to, the 2020 edition was in 2022. And then yes, this year was getting back on schedule, but I asked him if he was, you know, if 2026 would be the next edition or 28 and he wasn't sure yet, they kind of needed to figure a few things out before they decided. So yeah, maybe the next edition we can we can meet up and go.

Something I noticed, I think, in Markopoulos's work and in your film that you submitted [to the Film & Video Open Call], they both seem to share this interest in Greek myth. I was wondering if that influenced your choice of subject matter or if there was something else that did.

This particular film of mine was made before I started working on the Markopoulos films. But I have spent some time in Greece mainly, or not mainly, on vacation. I've been twice now, in 2021 and then last year in 2023. And I think it was that first trip that kind of really got into my head and invigorated me to make something out of it. And I've since made another film that is very Greek inspired. I also work a lot with Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler on their work. And I think kind of between the two of them and Robert Beavers and some other of the artists that I work with on a pretty consistent basis have all sort of molded me and have me thinking about film in a different way and have kind of allowed me to adopt some of their techniques and their point of views and kind of combine them all and re-amalgamated them into my own.

I noticed a pun in your title, Spring Forth. Spring the noun and the verb. And I think that's somewhat reflected in your choice of imagery. There's this close up of a statue and [you] use the split screen effect where it looks like the flowers are bursting from the head. And it seems to me that was a metaphor for the birth of Athena. Am I reading the film correctly?

Absolutely. So the film really came out of a… Last year was a very difficult year. And I was in a very depressed state. And I found that getting outside, especially with the camera in my hand, allowed a lot of that to kind of wash away for a time. And so that want and desire to kind of, like, take a few steps and spring out of the sadness and the uncertainty of a lot of the things that were going on in my life helped free that expression of joy and that expression of growth and sort of new beginnings. What I didn't realize is that it was also… This project was also sort of a false springs of sorts. I finished this film and my year got actually worse. So it was sort of this high and this peak that I didn't know that the like, sort of the bottom was gonna fall out, but for a time it was this real joy and spark of creativity. And yeah, this was the first film that I shot with this camera and really learning what it could do, the split screen effect and the double and triple exposures or something that I've never really worked with before. And I have a series of masks that can slide into the gate. And so all of those, you know, the desire to play and a desire to kind of like get out of the the mental space that I was in, this film is kind of the the result of that. And I’ve always been very interested in mythology and kind of the stories that we tell ourselves. I would not say I'm religious by any means, but I think that there is something sort of… I don't know, sort of basic to who we are that those stories kind of have stayed with us for so long. And my time in Greece only further inspired that really in seeing the temples and the, you know, the lengths that that people went to and like the places that people went to build shrines and churches on these far remote islands like deep into the hills, kind of brought that love of mythology and storytelling and such back to the fore. That's kind of all of where that sort of imagery and things really like came from.

What sort of equipment do you use when you shoot?

So I have a Ciné-Kodak Special number II. I believe my model is from the early post-war period. So like 45, 1946. And when I made this film, I only had one lens. I now have more of a telephoto lens on in addition to kind of the flat standard one. That particular camera allows for you to rewind, to do single frame, to do anything from eight frames a second to 48 frames a second. And it also has that space for a mask, a series of masks, to slide in. So I have, masks are top and bottom of the frame, left and right, and then also sort of an oval lens or an oval mask and a circle mask. This model of camera also came with a 100 and 200 foot magazine. Other than that, I have just a pretty basic tripod. I've made other work using an animation stand that I have. I may have done the titles for this one on the animation stand. But otherwise, it's like a pretty basic setup. And if i can't do it with the equipment on hand, I find a way to do it. Or, you know, I come up with another idea sort of thing.

I'm also curious, where did you shoot it?

Just in and around my neighborhood. So I live in DC in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, by the National Zoo. So the statue imagery was all done in my front yard. That statue planter was borrowed from a friend. And then the first image of the frog jumping into the pond was shot up at a local conservancy, Tregaron, that joins up with the Klingle Trail coming out of Rock Creek Park. And otherwise, all of the flowers are gardens in and around my neighborhood. And I found that very freeing to find sort of the subject so close at hand, it made shooting a very easy prospect of just like, you know, a walk around the block was enough to get some of those images captured. So yeah, it was a very hyper-localized little project.

You mentioned that you work as a projectionist. Do you have any memorable films that you've projected, or memorable experiences projecting?

Yeah, so I've been fortunate enough to work on quite a few of the recent 70 mm projects, you know, newer works like Oppenheimer and Dune 2 and Napoleon that have come out in the last few years. But I've also, every year the AFI puts on a noir series and a silent series, both of which are coming up this fall. So I get to work on some, you know, little seen, little known works during those runs. I recently projected 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia this year also in 70 at the AFI. At the National Gallery, I've done some some really cool 16 mm prints that were part of, it was sort of a full retrospective of a filmmaker named Warren Sonbert, who really was a contemporary of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler and that group that was growing up and making films in the sixties in New York. He passed away in the early nineties and the the retrospective was put on kind of in conjunction with the Pride Festival this year at the National Gallery. So that was really cool, to see a lot of the filmmaking faces kind of sprinkled in throughout his work. And he was able to travel kind of all over the globe. And he very much, you know, captured snippets of life all throughout his travels and all throughout his life, which were really amazing to see sort of in a very condensed sort of program.

It's funny to me, the films that you mentioned, how it represents two ends of the filmmaking spectrum. On one hand, you've got Oppenheimer and Dune. On the other hand, you've got Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, right? So you got these very large films —

Yeah, absolutely.

On the other hand, much smaller and very intimate films. And there seems to be very little in the middle.

Yeah, so I mean it's sort of what I come across at Colorlab too. We've worked on making prints of the Nicholas Cage movie Longlegs that came out this year and the movie Priscilla that came out last year, down to like the most experimental work in 16 that you can imagine. So it is very much a dichotomy of, you know, the big budget productions and the no-budget artist-made projects that… And yeah, there is very little in between, but I feel like that is sort of the filmmaking industry at this moment, is that there is a lot of that independent work and then there's the huge blockbuster stuff and not a ton to fill out the middle.

I want to know, how is it that you got into experimental film?

So I always wanted to do something with film, but I knew for certain that I did not want to go to film school. And what I wound up studying was Islamic studies and international studies at DePaul University in Chicago. And when I came back to DC and started working, I was working in international education and my boss at the time actually was, and still runs, the DC Independent Film Festival. So that was sort of my in for film in the DC area. And from there I was able to spread out and do, I worked and work very closely with DC Independent for a number of years as well as the DC Shorts Festival and kind of learning the event sides of things and submissions and things like that. But it wasn't until I started working at Colorlab that really my mind opened up to the experimental side. And you know that's when I went out and got a camera and I originally started shooting Super 8, just very informally with friends, you know, on travels. But the more I worked with other people's films and really looked at what I was doing and the footage that I was capturing, I got very… You know, it's a very cliched thing, but you walk into a modern art museum and look around and say, well, I can do that. And I think, you know, there were a lot of false starts and not fully formed ideas that I put down and those very much helped me kind of figure out what I liked and what I, you know, what I was was able to create and what, you know, I did on a lark and maybe never revisit again. But it really was seeing what other people did, actually putting my hands on like the original elements and seeing how things were edited, how different filmmakers used the equipment at hand, the different film stocks, the different printing methods, the different, you know, some filmmakers never use sort of the superimpositions or fades and other effects, and other filmmakers only, like, that is their primary method of, like, moving in and out of the frame and in and out of story. And so seeing those different methods over a huge swath of time, you know, I work on everything from, I've worked on things as old as, like, the early teens to films that are still shooting on film today. So I kind of have this full breadth of hands-on experience and seeing what and where and how things are or cut, and really point of view, really got me interested in like, what, if I were to make something, what would it look like? And that's kind of where I am now.

Well, I'm curious, what was the film scene like in Chicago and how does it compare to DC?

Honestly, I was not a part of the film scene in Chicago. It's one of my only regrets about my time there is that I didn't dive in. I think it was partially about not knowing where to start and being very unsure of kind of how and where to dive in and who to make connections with and things like that. And so I've since been back and have been able to visit like the Chicago Underground Film Festival and some of the programming at the Siskel Center. But yeah. And even, you know, that was now over ten years ago. And so I'm sure whatever I did, whatever I would have experienced had I had the willingness and the opportunity is probably a much different world than it is now.

Were there any specific films that you found to be formative during your period of exploring what you wanted to do, after you realized more or less what that would be?

Yeah, I think there's filmmakers like Jodie Mack and Barbara Hammer that I've kind of seen the totality of their work, having preserved Barbara's and working, you know, on Jodie's new projects as they come in. And also filmmakers like Ryan Marino and Nathaniel and Jerome, I think all of them have sort of, you know, melded into who I am and what I like to see and what, you know, as a result, what I'd like to make. But yeah, I remember it was one of Jodie’s films. It's called Hoarders Without Borders. And it essentially was a mistake. She left the shutter open too long. And so all of a sudden you got to see a lot of the behind the scenes work that goes into creating an animated, not a traditional traditionally animated film, but an animated film nonetheless. And that sort of broke my brain open to what was possible. Like it does not have to be 100% polished. It does not have to be, you know, there are happy accidents and, you know, the long sequence in my film with the flowers blooming out of the statue head, all of that, I planned it somewhat. You know, I knew where to put the camera and like how to frame it so that the statue head would be the vessel for sort of this emerging garden. But I went, you know, it was a happy accident how everything turned out in the end. It's when you're working with film, you don't get to see your progress until it's already too late. And if things don't work out, it's a start over or move on sort of moment. And so being able to be flexible and amenable to those happy accidents or what you originally thought may have been, you know, ruined, like film that has been ruined, turns out you can use it after all and maybe it's kind of like the… It becomes like the hinge to the story that you're trying to tell. So I think that has been sort of the most important point I've learned, is that like there is there's really no such thing as bad footage. It's just like, is it usable in this project or have you not figured out how to use it just yet?

I noticed some of the filmmakers that you mentioned, like Nathaniel Dorsky, don't have streaming copies of their films, or they don't have them transferred to digital. So I'm guessing that you must have seen these in preservation contexts or did you go to screenings where they would be projecting these works on film? How did you see these films?

With Nathaniel's films in particular, I hadn't seen many of his older works until I went up to MoMA this spring to see a retrospective that was being put on of both he and Jerome's films. So that was my first opportunity to see a lot of his most famous work. He is still an active filmmaker, so I am working with him to make his new projects and make new prints of those and help time them and get them printed for projection. With Jerome's, he and I are like… I, in some way, am the first person to see his finished film, like once, you know, he cuts his work print and sends that to a negative cutter. But I’m kind of the first person that sees the finished film even before he does, because I QC [quality control] the print before I ship it to him. So it's a very special relationship. And it can be a very vulnerable relationship too, because, you know, I am always hesitant to share my work because it's, you know, I think it's good, but does anybody else? And so, you know, even with filmmakers as seasoned as Nathaniel, I think there's always that doubt of like, will this project, will this film resonate with anyone? And so, yeah, it is a very special place to be. And it's also, I don't think necessarily his ethos is for everybody, but the way that he puts his films out into the world, I think are, you know, that special sense of community and like entrancement that you get sitting in a theater watching film projected on film in like a very special setting with equipment that very clearly not everyone is accustomed to or has access to, still makes for like… It becomes an event and it makes it that much more special. So yeah, I completely understand that is not for everybody, but I think it very much works for him and he's earned the right sort of to be that particular about how and when his films are shown.

What are the conversations like with the artists that you work with when you're preparing prints for their films?

So a lot of it comes down to kind of the, you know, we have set rules based on what our what our machinery, what our printers can do. And so, you know, a lot of experimental film is about bending and breaking those rules. And sometimes that's possible and sometimes it's not. And so it's figuring out like, what is your goal? What is the look that you are trying to achieve? And is it possible? And if it's not, how can we make it so? And then, you know, things really come down to like color and look and like, you know, timing and grading films over the years, I have noticed that my eye leans blue, and so I take note of that and like consciously pull back slightly when and timing something, because I know that my inclination is to make it more blue, because that is the look that I like. And other filmmakers have different opinions on that. Some people want it dark and saturated and like very colorful and have that like pop. Other people want more flatness and brighter. Other people are very attuned to like, I hate the color red. So if ever in doubt, go away from red. And so it's a very particular… Each filmmaker has their own look, has their own style, has their own editing pattern, which can be tricky. When printing, because we, you know, like those are part of the rules that we have to live by. And so when they wanna break those rules, it becomes it can become problematic. But yeah.

What sort of requests were denied?

It's never denied, really. It is just like, we can't do that the normal way that we would do that. So what alternative can we do to make it possible? We understand that there's a million ways to do things and that like a lot of the work that we are dealing with is attempting to break the form or reimagine the form. And so there are, maybe all tricks can't be done photochemically, like the traditional way things have been done, but there's very few things that we like flat out cannot do.

Your comment about how your eye tends to skew blue when color grading reminded me of this really interesting article I read some time ago in Filmmaker Magazine about how different restoration houses seem to have different color grading styles. So for instance, Ritrovata in Bologna seems to skew sepia, whereas Eclair in Paris seems to skew cyan or like, the split tone, warm and cool. And I'm wondering if those sorts of patterns can be attributed to this kind of like individual personal differences between who's coloring it, kind of like what you just mentioned, or if it's something more systemic. Have you read this article before?

I've not. But I was lucky enough to do the fellowship program at Bologna in 2018. So I have a little bit of experience with them. I think it is both. I think individual colorists and graders have their own look and style. And that can be informed by, or like, in opposition to sort of a house style. And so at Colorlab, because a lot of the films are so individual as is, it's hard. And we're working with expired film stocks and faded film stocks and quote unquote “improperly processed” film stocks. So it's like, because of that, I think there is not sort of a Colorlab look per se. But in a place like Bologna where, you know, it is sort of restoration by a large committee and there's a lot of moving pieces and there's a lot of say in what the final version looks like. I think that's where an institutional style is more prevalent. And I mean, they're working with very damaged and, you know, burned, and all sorts of neglected films. So I think it's easier in a sense like that to sort of point towards a similar look. Because of the various prints and elements that they used to combine and build a new restoration, that's okay. And I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. It's just, you know, if it works for them and if it works for the clients and the institutions that they are working with to bring these films back to life, then go for it.

It's just interesting to me because it seems to spark this debate about, what is the authentic look of the film, right? Which one is the correct one, they can't all be correct, right?

Well, yeah. So this especially came up with the 70 mm print of 2001 that we screened at the AFI, and how that compared to Christopher Nolan's like quote unquote “un-restoration” that he did a few years back. Each of us perceives a film very differently upon watching it. And that goes for, like, content as well as look. And I think they can begin to diverge very widely at a point. And I think it's also important to say like this is, you know, this is the Christopher Nolan version. This isn't the Stanley Kubrick version, because they're not the same thing. And it's almost like we will never achieve the, you know… The goal is always to go back to the original and make it look as close as possible. But it's important to remember that like each print in and of itself is a unique object. And even within a print reel to reel, things don't always match. And so, you know, you could have a film that was, all the reels were printed and processed back to back on the same day and shots, you know, cross cutting shots that happen in the same scene with the same like back and forth, you know, over the shoulder setup. It might not be perceivable to most people's eyes, but on a emulsion level of the film, the shots don't necessarily match up. They could have been shot on different days under different lighting setups and they did their best to, like, cobble them together to make it look like it was shot all together, but like that is rarely the case on an independent project, let alone a big Hollywood production. I think it's wrong to believe that there is one correct version of a film. I think every copy is its own version and they will align most of the time, but like the print of Jurassic Park that I saw outside of Baltimore, Maryland, was not the same version that screened at the premiere or screened in Miami. It's the inherent flaw to film, and also what I like about it is that it is incredibly unique for that reason.

I don't really have many more questions left. But I do want to ask, do you have any new projects coming up? And what are you excited to see later this year?

Sure. So I just finished this other Greek inspired project called Fiddleaf. And whereas Spring Forth was very much, you know, came out of the sort of the excitement of my feelings while I was in Greece, this new project is more sort of the desire to go back and sort of the little things in my life, whether it's food or a plate or things like that, that conjure that image and sort of those sense memories that remind me of my time there. And then kind of in conjunction with Spring Forth, I have what I hope to be two follow-up projects to that. So sort of a travel through the seasons and sort of the emotional journey of the last few years, also told in sort of a re-contextualizing, re-imagining myths. And so I hope to have the two of those done. I've already started, but you know, hope to work on the two of those for the rest of the year and maybe the beginning of next and see where they go and sort of how they fit together as standalone projects, but as a collective unit as well.

Great. And are there any movies you want to see that are coming out later this year by any chance?

I'm very intrigued by Megalopolis. I like a big swing and this sounds like the biggest swing.

I just saw it last night at the IMAX screening.

What'd you think?

It was definitely something! Incredibly admirable.

Yeah, I like, you know, if you're gonna do it, throw everything against the wall sort of thing. My biggest complaint with most mainstream movies these days is that they aren't weird enough. Like they got one or two, like, out of left field things kind of shoved under the door and into the final version, and sort of false promises of what the movie could have been. So I'm always excited when something truly off the wall sort of comes down. But yeah, that, I'm hoping to see The Substance this weekend. That sounds like another big swing.

I think I saw somebody post on Twitter that they're very surprised that Megalopolis is shorter than The Substance.

Yeah, it sounds, I don't know, too edited for what it's trying to say, but who knows? And then honestly, like if we're going, you know, super broad, I am very excited to see Gladiator II.

Okay.

I have two older brothers, and it was a movie that was on, the original was always on constant rotation. Sir Ridley has been a little hit or miss for me lately, but I loved House of Gucci. Napoleon was just fine. So yeah, I'm excited to see what and if this is a necessary project.

What was your favorite film of last year?

Oh, that's a great question. Probably, you know, of like the stuff that was out and like, you know, Oscar-y sort of things, I loved Killers of the Flower Moon and Past Lives, but probably the one that stuck with me the most and, actually I… Was that last year? Asteroid City?

Yes.

So I saw that originally in the theater and was sort of baffled by it and very unconvinced that it worked. And then I watched it at the beginning of this year again, because I love essentially everything Anderson's done. And I watched it again at the beginning of this year and it sort of bowled me over in a way I was not expecting. I thought I was missing some — like I revisited it because I thought I was missing something and like, and it turns out I was and I'm very happy that I gave it another shot. That was, yeah, that was probably my favorite of last year.

So right after we end the call, do you mind sending over three images that inspire you?

Sure.

Attached are three stills that I drew inspiration from. The first two are b&w 35 mm photographs I took during my vacation in Greece. One shows a lonely shrine at the edge of the water, which I found incredibly powerful, especially with the sort of unknowable out there beyond the haze of the sea and sky. It made me think, “No wonder the people who lived here believed in gods and monsters,” as their world was so insular and anything beyond was foreign and mysterious. The other is of the little foliage left after a long, dry summer. Trekking and hiking through the endless hills that would be verdant and green during the rainy season, there was not much but sun-scorched plants along the dusty trail by the time I got to them. And so I wanted to recreate that world of plenty and growth that I was unable to see in real time while I was there. The color image is one from the very first footage I shot with my then new 16 mm camera, as well as when I was testing and playing around with the masks that would become such an important part to the film. It opened up what I could do and how I began conceptualizing a world that was growing and bursting at the seams.

Rhizome DC is a community-run arts organization, alternative music venue, and DIY screening space founded in 2015 and based in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, DC.

Filament is a new screening initiative promoting investigation, stewardship, and community among DC-area filmmakers and moving picture artists.