Panic Bodies

“Filmed in the shadow of AIDS, ‘Panic Bodies’ is Hoolboom’s testament to the permanent impermanence of the flesh. The film’s six parts show the range of Hoolboom’s engagement with mortality, from rage to reverie … Whether he’s remixing ‘Terminator 2’ or concocting a female paradise, Hoolboom finds a balance between razor-sharp intellect and palpable love for images and sounds. To watch ‘Panic Bodies’ is to see what it means to live and die in the cinema.” – Cameron Bailey, NOW “Paul Rioeur said the toughest things humans have to face are that we die and not everyone loves us. ‘Panic Bodies’ catalogues earthly attachments – physical, material – as part of the spiritual process of acknowledging mortality, of preparing to die.” – Steve Reinke “‘Panic Bodies’ is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body’s betrayals: disease, decline and death. The film is a panorama of emotionally charged recollections of strange relatives and estranged siblings, staged recreations of fast-fading pasts and personal mythologies, and reflections on the anxious states created by the body’s fragile claims on time and space. It’s about being a stranger in your own skin. ‘Panic Bodies’ perfects the phantom quality of any good work about mourning, but it is not reducible to that. It is also enlivened by the intimacy that comes from having made a spectacle of personal secrets.” – Kathleen Pirrie Adams, Xtra “A meditation on the after-life that’s as powerful as anything in cinema… one of the truly defining movies in Canadian filmmaking history.” – Peter Godard, The Toronto Star