PHILIP HOFFMAN INTRODUCES: THE FILMS OF RICK HANCOX
Canadian experimental filmmaker and professor Phil Hoffman chose the unique works of filmmaker Rick Hancox, a seminal Canadian independent and experimental filmmaker whose lush and provocative body of work explores autobiography, time and memory, landscape and the questioning of documentary convention. Since the 1970’s through his filmmaking and teaching, Rick Hancox has undoubtedly influenced the direction of independent film in Canada.
“In the late 70s Rick Hancox’s autobiographical project fuelled me like a house on fire! Suddenly, all that I was doing with poetry, photography and music could be brought to film. I will never forget Hancox’s dictum to young filmmakers, which was passed on to him by his film teacher George Semsel, –that in order to make a film about the world you must first, in some way, use film to look at your `self ‘, at your family, friends, lovers and surroundings…. after all, filmmakers inevitably project themselves onto the screen whether it be conscious or not” – Phil Hoffman
WILD SYNC | 1973 | 11 MIN
In Wild Sync, Hancox pointedly subverts such mystification by letting the filmmaking process itself be the subject of the film. At the same time Hancox reveals his love of two filmic forms-the autobiographical form and home movies. Wild Sync, which features Hancox himself with friends, is “a combination Christmas home movie/instructional film on how to make lip-sync sound films with only your average wind-up camera and wild tape recorder.” (The Frontier, WNED TV Channel 17, Program Notes. Air Date: Oct 3, 1981)
HOUSE MOVIE | 1972 | 15 MIN
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.
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS | 1978 | 50 MIN
“Home for Christmas is a unique exploration of the Canadian mythos—winter, trains, booze, the family and solitude. In penetrating the essence of the mythical, Hancox has combined the home movie with the technological epic, to achieve a profound filmic archaeology of the warmth of Northern existence…” – Michael Dorland
LANDFALL | 1983 | 11 MIN
“Landfall was shot in P.E.I., near the family home on the Northumberland Strait. The original footage, shot in 1974, was a kind of interactive, camera “dance” with the environment. Poetry became important when the footage was later superimposed onto its own mirror-image, to help direct the viewer away from the luring yet limited world of image-identification. ‘I Thought There Were Limits,’ by Quebec poet D.G. Jones, was used to encourage the viewer to reject Newtonian notions of space and time, and to conceptualize the film’s interplay between absence, desire, and presence. Eventually, the limitation of text as spoken signifier is exposed through dynamic visual techniques reminiscent of concrete poetry.” (Rick Hancox)
Rick Hancox, – filmmaker, professor and musician – grew up in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island. All three locations infused his poetic and finely crafted experimental documentaries which fuse personal landscapes with issues of time, memory and history. He was introduced to film at Prince Edward Island by American documentary filmmaker George Semsel. He went on to do graduate work in film and photography at New York University and Ohio University where he earned an MFA in Film in 1973. After working briefly in film in New York City he went on to teach at Sheridan College from 1973-1985 where he influenced a generation of Canadian independent filmmakers. In 1986 he joined the communications department at Concordia University where he currently teaches.
Perhaps one of Canada’s finest experimental filmmakers, Philip Hoffman has also had a huge impact on filmmakers across the country from his “Film Farm” filmmaker retreat in Ontario. Participants learn to process their own film and develop a short project. Films made with the support of the Film Farm and retrospectives of this retreat’s body of work have been screened in Canada and the US. Hoffman is currently a faculty member in the Film and Video Department at York University. His noted work includes Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan & Encarnacion, ?O, Zoo!, The Making of a Fiction Film, Kitchener-Berlin, What these ashes wanted and the recently released All Fall Down.
