Bio

A film artist of memory and association, Philip Hoffman has long been recognized as Canada’s pre-eminent diary filmmaker. He apprenticed in Europe with Peter Greenaway in 1985, where he made ?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film) (1985), which was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award. As well in 2002 he received the Golden Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival and Gus Van Sant Award from the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2002 for What These Ashes Wanted, a diaristic meditation on loss and grief.  In 2009 he completed the feature-length experimental documentary, All Fall Down, a reflection on childhood, property, ecology and love. In the winter of 2014 he was a participating artist in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Border Cultures (work, labour), The Dialogic Illuminations of Marian McMahon. New films include Gaed (45 min, 2014), world premiere at Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, and Slaughterhouse (15 min, 2014).

 

Works

What These Ashes Wanted

  • 2015
  • Phillip Hoffman

WHAT THESE ASHES WANTED is one of those films that forces you to rethink the medium. There are pictures, yes, and movement, light and sound. There is however, no narrative, and yet there is emotion."

What These Ashes Wanted

By The Time We Got To Expo

  • 2015
  • Eva Kolcze, Phillip Hoffman

A meditative journey through Expo 67, re-visiting a significant moment in Canadian history using manipulated imagery taken from educational and documentary films. Footage has been re-worked using tints, toners and photochemical techniques to create a vibrant collision of colours, textures and forms.

By The Time We Got To Expo

Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion

  • 2015
  • Phillip Hoffman

The bus stopped on the Mexican highway, placing us in full view of a young boy, motionless, on the hot pavement. In this film, the incident is revealed through a poetic text, derived from my written journals. The poetry mixes primarily with Mexican streetscapes which compliment the text in a tonal sense. Most images are 28 seconds long, the “breath” of the 16mm Bolex camera.

Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion

?O, Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film)

  • 2015
  • Phillip Hoffman

"Philip Hoffman's ‘?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film)’ uses a diary format to skirt along the edge of someone else's filmed narrative (Peter Greenaway's ‘A Zed & Two Noughts’), and to trace the anatomy of pure image-making.

?O, Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film)