Category Archives: Process Cinema & Other Workshops

MIXING UP THE MEDICINE: FILM FARM 30TH ANNIVERSARY

@ OTHER CINEMA SAN FRANCISCO SEPT 21 2024

with Deirdre Logue, Brett Kashmere, Craig Baldwin, Phil Hoffman, Alfonso Alvarez, Annapurna Kumar – missing from photo: Maïa Cybelle Carpenter

thank you Craig! (archive tour)

CANYON CINEMA SALON, SAN FRANCISCO

9/20/2024 – A Salon with Philip Hoffman

vulture & Film Farm Films (by Maïa Cybelle Carpenter & Markus Maicher). Program curated by Brett Kashmere: Continue reading MIXING UP THE MEDICINE: FILM FARM 30TH ANNIVERSARY

Deep 1 @ Simon Fraser University, B.C. & Ribalta Fest, Italy (Review)

Dim Sum with Chris Chong Chan Fui & Terra Jean Long in Vancouver
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Sept 2024 Programmer: Chris Chong, Screening Moderator: Terra Jean Long

The Gāyatrī mantra of the Ṛigveda sets-up the entire short film: it is the mantra itself that creates the atmosphere of darkness, followed by the first creation: the tree, which contains the identity of darkness as if it were its visible matter…. (see below)                         “Deep 1” Ribalta Film Fest Review

`Deep 1′ preview

DEEP 1  (2023, 15 min, HDV or 35mm)

Deep 1 (2023)

Hoffman on `Deep 1′

more on Deep1 and Flowers #3

Flowers #3  (Kissed by the Sun)             (2023, 10 min, HDV )

Flowers #3 by Philip Hoffman (Kissed by the Sun)

more on Flowers #3 (Kissed by the Sun)

…more on Hoffman’s films

 

Hoffman at Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2016
Waterloo-born filmmaker receives Governor General’s Award

Martha Rosler on Hoffman’s Films

“Philip Hoffman is a precious resource, one of the few contemporary filmmakers whose work provides a bridge to the classical themes of death, diaspora, memory, and, finally, transcendence. As Landscape With Shipwreck makes clear, Hoffman explores these most Canadian of themes without grandiosity; instead they emerge from stories held close to the ground, the family, and personal experience, whether at home or in very unfamiliar places indeed. And he does so through a constant renovation of method that enriches the viewers’ ability to grasp how film form contains and conditions meaning. This is just the sort of human voice articulated through film that we desperately need amidst the thunder of corporate media in all forms.” (“Landscape with Shipwreck: 1st Person Cinema and the Films of Philip Hoffman”, Insomniac Press/Images Festival 2001)

 

VULTURE  (2019)

`vulture’  (frame enlargement from 16mm, processed in Oregano)

`vulture’ preview

Kim Knowles on `vulture’

“ Hoffman’s vulture” a beautiful and contemplative study of interspecies co-existence, where farm animals roam freely and the camera patiently observes their various interactions. Shot on 16mm film and processed with plants and flowers, it’s also an exercise in eco-sensitivity on so many levels.” Edinburgh International Film Festival, Blackbox

Jordan Cronk on `vulture’

more on `vulture’

CHIMERA (1995)

Chimera (frame enlargement from 16mm)

Dirk de Bruyn on `Chimera’

“The film consists of collected, diaristic images amassed through Hoffman’s travels. Uluru… Russian shoppers, a Cairo market, and day to day images from home and away… make floating appearances. These have been gathered on the run, and then reconstituted with an uncanny ephemeral floating rhythm, a dance of light, and replaying, with commendable control, the idea of visual music, visual jazz. Though the method of collection may have had an air of arbitrariness about it, the meticulous construction and focus on rhythm in the finished piece suggest an artist who has learnt to master technique so as to let it speak for him about ‘other’ things.”

more on “Chimera”

KOKORO IS FOR HEART (1999)

Kokoro is for Heart (frame enlargement from 16mm)

`Kokoro is for Heart’ preview

Liz Czach on `Kokoro is for Heart’

“Communication takes a poetic turn in Kokora is for Heart. Originating as a performance piece, the director, Phil Hoffman, screened segments of this film in a random order selected by the audience (Opening Series 3). Accompanying this was the sound poetry of Gerry Shikatani. From this process the film has found its organic and final structure.” (TIFF Program,  1999)

ALL FALL DOWN (2009)

All Fall Down (frame enlargement from 16mm)

`All Fall Down’ preview

Adrian Kahgee & Debbie Ebanks Schlums on `All Fall Down’ 

Released a decade before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Hoffman subtly questions how guests on Indigenous land, himself included, have come here to live. The film’s political-historical observations should feel like an anarchronism today…The lack of political progress regarding the Calls to Action, the effects and affects of migration, the struggles with the legal system, the impact of all of this on mental health and on future generations, are some of the pressing contemporary issues resonating today in All Fall Down.

Scott MacKenzie on `All Fall Down’

Tom Kohut on `All Fall Down’

Michael Sicinski on `All Fall Down’

Stan Brakhage on `passing through/torn formations’

passing through/torn formations accomplishes a multi-faceted experience for the viewer—it is a poetic document of Family, for instance—but Philip Hoffman’s editing throughout is true to thought process, tracks visual theme as the mind tracks shape, makes melody of noise and words as the mind recalls sound.”

PASSING THROUGH/TORN FORMATIONS (1988)

passing through/torn formations (frame enlargement from 16mm reversal  orig A,B,C,D rolls)

`passing through/torn formations’ preview

Mike Hoolboom on `passing through/torn formations’

Hoffman’s sixth film in ten years, passing through/torn formations is a generational saga laid over three picture rolls that rejoins in its symphonic montage the broken remnants of a family separated by war, disease, madness and migration. Begun in darkness with an extract from Christopher Dewdney’s Predators of the Adoration, the poet narrates the story of ‘you,’ a child who explores an abandoned limestone quarry….The film’s theme of reconciliation begins with death’s media/tion—and moves its broken signifiers together in the film’s central image, ‘the corner mirror,’ two mirrored rectangles stacked at right angles. This looking glass offers a ‘true reflection,’ not the reversed image of the usual mirror but the objectified stare of the Other. When Rimbaud announces ‘I am another’ he does so in a gesture that unites traveller and teller, confirming his status within the story while continuing to tell it. It is the absence of this distance, this doubling that leads the Czech side of the family to fatality.

complete Cinema Canada review by Mike Hoolboom on `passing through/torn formations’ Continue reading Deep 1 @ Simon Fraser University, B.C. & Ribalta Fest, Italy (Review)

workshops, info, recipes, videos, photos…

Process Cinema Workshop EICTV 2023

Photos: Saugeen Takes on Film Workshops 2018 & 2019 here

Excerpts from Saugeen Takes On Film Workshop here

Filmmakers: Kelsey Diamond, Sharon Isaac, Natalka Pucan, Jennifer Kewageshig, Emily Kewageshig, Taylor Cameron

 

`Green’ Developing Process for 3378 film

Continue reading workshops, info, recipes, videos, photos…

Working with Plants in the Time of Covid 2020

cookin’ in Vulture
`Green’ Developing Process for 3378 film

Phytogram-making Recipe

Saugeen First Nations Takes On Film

Saugeen First Nations Workshop 2018

Drive-In Screening of Thunder Rolling Home by Sharon Isaac and Kelsey Diamond 2019

Film Farm On the Road at Aberystwyth University, Wales 2019

Drying Film
Kim Knowles and Deirdre Logue foraging
Flower Process Prep

Film Farm on the Road, Analogue Farm, Rochdale UK 2019

Film Farm at Analogue Farm’s 1st Public Screening
Analogue Farm 2019

 

Under the Strawberry Sun, Workshop by Organic Film Workshop at Silent Green by Dagie Brundhert & Philip Hoffman, Berlin 2019

Poster & Workshop Group Film

Film Farm On the Road at S8 Mostra de Cinema Periférico 2018

`GREEN’ Processing with Coffee & Flowers

‘GREEN’ Processing_Recipes 

Making `Green’ Developer

 

Making Walnut Toner

 

Cine en Preceso, Internacional de Cine y Television, at San Antonio de Los Banos in Cuba 2010-2018

Lecciones en Proceso (16mm to HDV, 30 min., 2012)

Spanish/English

Lessons in Process in Berlinale 2012

 

Cine en Proceso 2016

 

Cine en Proceso 2016
Cine en Proceso 2017

 

Process Cinema, York University Guest: Eva Kolcze

 

Process Cinema University of Calgary 2018

 

Workshop Group Film by Hunter

 

Video by Jenn Norton

Waterloo Born Filmmaker Receives The Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (Jeff Hicks, K-W Record)

York University Prof Receives Governor General Award

Philip Hoffman is one of the most influential experimental film artists working in Canada today. He has created a remarkable and sustained body of media art over nearly four decades in that has had an immense impact on several generations of Canadian experimental filmmakers and digital moving image artists.

His enduring impact is seen in the development of personal filmmaking, techniques of hand-processing and artisanal production, and the method of process cinema. His work combines sensitively observational documentary aesthetics, attentive to small gestures and humanist themes, with innovative forms of cinematic experimentation. Hoffman’s inquiry is tied to a deep sense of social responsibility and a profound commitment to pedagogy and to community.

– Michael Zryd, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema & Media Arts, York University

Read More…

 

Process Cinema Workshops in Northern Ontario and London

Philip Hoffman and Eva Kolcze will be conducting a touring process cinema workshop based on the Film Farm, one in Northern Ontario and one in London in association with the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto.

Process Cinema explores a creative tradition in alternative filmmaking that is improvisational and interactive. Through this process-driven methodology, the screenplay as governing document is replaced by a fluid integration of writing, shooting and editing, not necessarily in that order.This way of working ‘through’ process has a comparative body of work in music, through jazz, in art, through ‘action painting’, in the performative aspects of the sketchbook or through ‘spontaneous prose’ in beat poetry.”

Information about the London workshop

Information about the workshop in Northern Ontario

LUX FILM FARM 2015, U.K. – A Hand Processing Film Workshop with Philip Hoffman

Lux Workshop 2015

filmfarm_outdoorscreening

Philip Hoffman has been developing a hands-on, artisanal approach to filmmaking for more than 20 years in Canada at his summer workshop, the `Independent Imaging Retreat’ or `Film Farm’. Now this process-oriented workshop comes to the UK with a 2-day intensive project, ‘the Lux Film Farm’ hosted by Lux and the Double Negative Dark Room in proximity to the Hackney Marshes in East London.

Read more at LUX’s site for PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: LUX FILM FARM A Hand Processing Film Workshop with Philip Hoffman, 20-21 June 2015