Rivers of Time, The Films of Philip Hoffman

(Edited by Tom McSorley)

Download Rivers of Time as PDF.

Published by the Canadian Film Institute, 2008. All rights reserved.

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The lake is calm, like a great sheet of ice.

In the middle, between the beach and the far shore,
has surfaced a large finely textured brick,
its sharp edges shaped by the rising sun.

Beneath the scene, a voice:

I like wrecked bricks, the points pierce my eyes, sending me hurling in space.

I revisited this curious post-adolescent site in 1989 after the completion of an initial cycle of excavations. Formal experiments on super-8 using the single-frame-zoom, which splayed the surround of the filmed subjects, squeezing out their ghosts. After seven years of collect, reflect, revise this form found its place in the film `Chimera’, and the power of its pull lead me into dark gardens of loss. In Mark Doty’s words:

What these ashes wanted, I felt sure,
Was not containment but participation.
Not an enclosure of memory,
But the world.’

These films are a circle of stones. Embedded in each is the world, reaching deeply into the past, rolling on..

— Philip Hoffman, Circling Stones, Spring 2008


Contents

Phil
MIKE HOOLBOOM

On Philip Hoffman
ANDRE LOISELLE

Thawing Phil Hoffman’s Freeze-up (1979)
RICK HANCOX

Tales of Hoffman (Expected Time of Arrival)
SCOTT BIRDWISE

I know you are, so what am I?: 25 passing through/torn formations
CHRIS ROBINSON

Kitchener-Berlin as Aesthetic Allegory
JAMES MISSEN

Kitchener-Berlin
PENNY MCCANN

Time Sweeping Space
TOM MCSORLEY

Experiments in Disorientation: Chimera
CHRISTOPHER ROHDE

Travelling Companions
TOM MCSORLEY

Interview
Philip Hoffman Filmmography 1978-2008

Contributors


Download Rivers of Time as PDF.

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