Genres: experimental

  • Home Was Never Like This

    Step-printed images of a “home” – a suburban house, no people in sight – combine with a children’s story, told in saccarine tones, about the country mouse who discovers that “there’s no place like home.” A gently told tale of alienation.

  • Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 1

    This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems…

  • Homebelly

    “Homebelly” combines waking dreams with unsettling fragments of this and that. An icy soundscape is set to a live-action animated drama featuring a sleeping body and a persistant rock.

  • Horseman, the Woman and the Moth, The

    A long myth drawn directly onto the film’s surface, which is painted, dyed, treated so that it will grow controlled crystals and mold – as textures of the figures and forms of the drama – some images stamped thru melted wax crayon techniques, some images actual objects (such as moth wings) collaged directly on the celluloid… so that the protagonists of this myth (as listed in the title) weave thru crystalline structures and organic junglesof the colourful world of hypnogogic vision – edited into “themes and variations” that tell “a thousand and one” stories while, at the same time, evoking…

  • Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 11

    This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems…

  • House Movie

    “House Movie” is a direct autobiography, with events interpreted as they were in progress. It is about living intimately with another person, in a rented house which never becomes home, due to an unavoidable separation. At times the camera almost takes the point of view of the architecture, as witness to the kind of transient emotions common to houses like this. Using a Rachmaninoff excerpt, the film is edited symphonically, with theme and subordinate theme, development and re-capitulation, echoed in the recurring visual motifs and rhythmic cutting. “The extravagant camera movement that marks ‘House Movie’ is not so much lyrical…

  • House of Pain

    “A bold and startling work filled with images at once beautiful and profoundly disturbing, the film is a hybrid of DeSade, Dali and Bataille, a nightmare that takes place somewhere between sleep and death. A profound testament of the body at its limits, whose fantastical vantages lend the body a rare grace… Leave the inner child at home.” – Bill Evans, Metro Cinema “The Canadian avant-garde has found its Salo, and its name is ‘House of Pain.’ Prolific, hugely talented Toronto/Vancouver/Toronto experimental filmmaker Mike Hoolboom’s new feature must be the most transgressive Canadian film ever made. Shot in black-and-white and…

  • How the Hell Are You?

    Based on a correspondence with a gay friend in the sixties, this collage film is a portrait of a person and a decade. Against a montage of found images, the narrator comments on life, love, and the American Dream.

  • How To: Festoon

    “How To: Festoon” is where my life as a filmmaker intersects with my job as a conveyor belt salesman. Three years ago, financial need and family obligation forced me to work in my family business – selling conveyor belts. Just as each of us is comprised of many different layers of experiences, “How To: Festoon” is comprised of two layers of film that form my identity. The first layer is a structurally organized account of a Limestone Quarry in which rock from a cliff is collected by a huge tractor and dump truck and processed into small pebbles on a…

  • Human on My Faithless Arm

    Winner of Honourable Mention (Experimental) at the 1987 Canadian Student Film Festival/Montreal International Film Festival, “Human on My Faithless Arm” shatters the common stereotype of the deaf. The main character, remaining nameless throughout, has rejected “the institution of the deaf” only to find herself, years later, rejected by society. In this multi-dimensional portrait of an individual trapped between self and self-image, issues of sexuality and economics are questioned. This film is an exploration of alienation through techniques of superimposition, sound displacement ,and deconstruction/reconstruction of language, exposing the hearing-impaired women’s comprehension of sound and conversation. “‘Human on My Faithless Arm’ is…