“‘White Museum’ is a 35-minute audio piece with 33 minutes of clear leader tape. In some hands, that could mean a fatal tour into the land of self-indulgence, but Hoolboom manages to make of his cinema without images an engaging, squatter’s eye view of the critical landscape. Hoolboom’s anecdotal voice-over floats over a soundtrack collage of pop-culture effluvia, television ads and snippets of rock music. His musings on film, the word and the workload of trees often resemble a cerebral stand-up routine.” – Robert Everett-Green, Globe and Mail “What a great idea! Makes Jim Jarmusch look like Cecil B. DeMille.” – John Harkness, NOW “Hoolboom pushes the irony to an opposite limit with his fascinating proposal for a ‘cinema without images.’” – Michael Dorland, Cinema Canada “One outstanding short film is Mike Hoolboom’s ‘White Museum.’ By no means generous with his images, Hoolboom is far from minimalist. Drawing on (uncredited) sources from Warhol to Derrida, the voice-over monologue is an entertaining and thoughtful commentary on the aural component of cinema, on language, movie-watching and production economics. The visual poverty of ‘White Museum’ is, paradoxically, the means by which Hoolboom creates a powerful analysis of the cinematic image.” – Katie Russell, NOW Voted one of the ten all-time worst films by American critic Fred Camper. Collections: National Gallery of Canada; Queens University
Filter Films
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Pools of light and shadow displace each other as the camera describes an arc or spiral on a section of wall or ceiling. Periodically the motion stops, replaced by selective focus on a grainy object, creating a sense of wave motion in and out of the screen. This film is concerned with the projected, not just light or the emulsion or the illusion or the projector or the camera, but all of them. The surface of the film, the grain, is remembered when a similar but illusionistic surface appears (just a magnified), crossing the fram. Other times the grain is left to itself.
While Revolved
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“Where the City and Water Meet” is a film of interest to those who like to trace urban history or restore its heritage, and to those who plan cities professionally or advocate the citizen’s view of planning. It is for sailors, swimmers, stollers, indeed anyone who has felt that special attraction to the threshold “Where the City and Water Meet.” A study guide is available for teachers who wish to use the film at secondary or post-secondary levels.
Where the City and Water Meet
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“Part fictional narrative, part travelogue, part documentary, this unusual film serves as another sign that non-fiction film as we know it is going through a major revolution. Engaging fictional narrative elements to create a ‘mystery,’ ‘Where Is Memory’ is a boldly original and affecting meditation on the nature of complicity and the Third Reich. Masterful use of archival footage matched with contemporary footage of Europe, a haunting score and an inspired mix of realities for a thoughtfully framed poetic odyssey that charts new cinematic territory.” – Judges’ Award, Northwest International Film Festival “Mixing narrative with archival and new footage, ‘Where Is Memory’ traces the dreamlike journey of the ‘Sleepwalker’ through contemporary Germany. After finding a suitcase full of Nazi memorabilia at his door, he embarks on a quest to historic sites of the Third Reich, exploring the past with an old movie camera and trying to mediate memories that may or may not be real. The film deftly intercuts modern and historic footage, such ass the 1936 Olympic Stadium, the bridge at Remagen, the Fuhrerbau (Hitler’s Munich office) and Hitler’s retreat high in the Bavarian Alps – often matching camera placement, movement and types of lenses exactly. “The effect is thoroughly disturbing and original. The Sleepwalker’s trek culminates in a meeting with Eva Adolphina Hitler, who claims to be the Fuhrer’s granddaughter. This unorthodox and passsionate film essay vivifies questions of fact and fiction, memory and denial and the differences between written history, photographic evidence and individual memory.” – Seattle International Film Festival “‘Where Is Memory’ is accurate in its facts and locations, but is intended to be subjective; creating an experience rather than being about an experience.” – Festival Du Nouveau Cinema
Where Is Memory
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“A hybrid of narrative and performance, film and video that uses a baroque train trip to suggest the eruption of chaos behind every stray desire. Loose enigma gets its due here, but it is when the tape is plainest – as in a sequence where a woman reveals fantasies of men that approach ‘Cosmo’ dimensions – that things get most fascinating.” – Cameron Bailey, NOW “Where Does Mess Come From?” is a story of chaos in its most pedestrian form. The constant breakdown of order in the universe is also the constant breakdown of order in our lives. The need to clean house is also the need to straighten up nonsensical relationships. Humorous and disturbing, “Where Does Mess Come From?” eroticizes the male subject while examining that awkward gulf between men and women.
Where Does Mess Come From?
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… inspired by the only passage in Jean Paul Sartre’s writings which has ever specifically concerned me – the passage from “Nausea” wherein the protagonist sits in a park and imagines his own suicide. (SB)
Black Vision
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“Where” is a film carved from a period of intense personal introspection. Images incessantly search for roots, reverberate into the past, present, and future, inquiring into the mysterious, stirring perceptions, and discover where there are more questions than answers.
Where
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Three women spend a summer’s afternoon in a garden overshadowed by a convent and the towers of the Roman Catholic Basilica. Six words – Truth, Beauty, Strange, Charmed, Up and Down – provide the basis for visual and poetic metaphors about sex, death and crazy women.
When Women Are Crazy
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“When the Mind Hears” is part of an ongoing body of work in both photography and film. This work was motivated by the challenges I face in communicating to my daughter who is deaf. It stems from my observation and my own experiences of growing up different. This black-and-white film is an abstract response to visual memory and sensory development. (AH) “…with distance, respect and the unromantic gaze, children are observed: they run with an unshakable sense that the earth will support them. Underwater shots of a swan swimming, webbed feet pushing against the water moving it aside to propel its motion. There is more here than meets the eye. The maze of the land and of the sound throughout the work are ways toward making sense of ‘the world’ which appears in this work simultaneously as claustrophobic and infinite – but always intimate. Land, water, air – the elements of the sound and images. Slow motion observation of a toddler walking through and open outdoors space culminates in a realisation that sound too can come from watching. The final sequence is in silence.” – Marian McMahon, Independent Curator
When the Mind Hears
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Based on the poem of the same name by Joe Rosenblatt (Governor-General Award Winner) and read by the poet in the film. Environmental and electronic sounds, found footage and footage shot for the film combine with the poet’s voice to evoke the eerie landscape of the poem in an original interpretation. The usual poetic questions regarding existence, love, death and bureaucracy are cleverly broached.
When the Light Grey Man Carries Your Luggage
