This article addresses handmade films and especially artist-run labs as sites of hands-on film culture
that reactivate moments and materials from media history. Drawing on existing research, discourses
and discussions with contemporary experimental filmmakers affiliated with labs or practicing their
work in relation to film lab infrastructure, we focus on these sites of creation, preservation and
circulation of technical knowledge about analog film. But instead of reinforcing the binary of
analog vs. digital, we argue that the various material practices from self-made apparatuses to
photochemistry and film emulsions are ways of understanding the multiple materials and layered
histories that define post-digital culture of film. This focus links our discussion with some themes in
media archaeology (experimental media archaeology as a practice) and to current discussions about
labs as arts and humanities infrastructure for collective project and practice-based methods.
