U B U W E B - Film & Video: Henry Hills

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Henry Hills

Gotham (music video for John Zorn's Naked City)
1990, 6.9 mb (MOV)

"120 Minutes", MTV, June 1990; ALIVE TV (Alive From Off Center), PBS, summer 1992.
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Kino Da
1981, 5.6 mb (MOV)

KINO DA! (ah, key, key) KINO DA!/The Dead die die dada low king quanto zhong/MOVE! (ur, ur)/Grey todays it-a clear to the quick ear, quicker z'heels/The Poe (pay, po, pee, pick-pick), nuf of "D" yet/Call Vertov/(beep, beep)/Eisenstein even/& viterulably cheeness of a ram innerwear/(airs; when)/Time, Time, Money/d-d-d/ junk rock did travel & falls/(spring)/Fall/Spring is the simplest inflationary dime.///Be in everything Joy, in experimental & proletarian & wwea air of airs/at this school of poetry-painting/CUT! "To know/toe/no! no! MONTAGE (nadazha), in any instant (instant) of the writing of Stein & the facts of that (tle) kind./FEEL (the steak)/yes, ache, in trends & whatevers./Mmmm-pah-ah, Cops, man, in case (nnn), man (nnn)./(KO) be-a mayu po pony; (KO) be-a what?) o-long kind.//GO! (be what) OM, prose, Pentacost; be what this there the (pause) & (serious pause) the neb with a gram of ire illia-it's still justs Jah.//Viparko r-rrr re ad adici, yes!/YES!//ssssssssssane! /mmmm vidda pot re-a-uschious of a ship. Viparko Roma Schoma Schlav keybo z'Krushchev. (wink)
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Money
1985, 47.2 mb (MOV)

A manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated. Filmed primarily on the streets of Manhattan for the ambient sounds and movements and occasional pedestrian interaction to create a rich tapestry of swirling colors and juxtaposed architectural spaces in deep focus and present the intense urban overflowing energy that is experience living here. MONEY is thematically centered around a discussion of economic problems facing avant-garde artists. Discussion, however, is fragmented into words and phrases and reassembled into writing. Musical and movement phrases are woven through this conversation to create an almost operatic composition. Give me money!

Starring: John Zorn, Diane Ward, Carmen Vigil, Susie Timmons, Sally Silvers, Ron Silliman, James Sherry, Peter Hall, David Moss, Mark Miller, Christian Marclay, Arto Lindsay, Pooh Kaye, Fred Frith, Alan Davies, Tom Cora, Jack Collom, Yoshiko Chuma, Abigail Child, Charles Bernstein, Derek Bailey, and Bruce Andrews
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Radio Adios, 1982, 34.3 mb (MOV)
RADIO ADIOS (1982) is a monologue in 12 plaited strands; an extremely precise, condensed and intensely rhythmic Busby Berkeleyish spectacle of an examination of conversational and literary language over a fair range of vocal timbre, microphones, volume settings and single-system sync peculiarities and its dissolution into music to the accompaniment of simultaneous Manhattan ambiances spunctuated by fragments of jazz, personalized handheld camera movement, movement from cut to cut--juxtapositions of scale, pulsating changes in light intensity, a varying pallette of various filmstocks, generations, etc., at an appropriately furious pace and in strict one-track sync,.offering simultaneously several levels of apprehension or interpretation to encourage multiple viewings.

Starring Hannah Weiner, Diane Ward, Sally Silvers, Jemeel Moondoc & Muntu, Aline Mayer, Jackson MacLow, Abigail Child, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews and Rashied Ali on drums, with George Kuchar as a Maoist revolutionary.
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A New Life
1989 (MOV)

In 1988, under the inspiration of George Kuchar, I bought an 8mm camcorder. The single-system 16mm camera on which I had shot PLAGIARISM, RADIO ADIOS, & MONEY had died of stress and I thought this would allow me to pursue synch ideas. Unfortunately video editing at that time involved bumping the footage up to 3/4" U-matic and paying $12.50/hour to work on 2 decks with a controller; it was cheaper to shoot 16mm and get a workprint. The conceit of the abandoned project was to create artist couples (people that had never before met) and have them discuss relationship issues and love. Participating artists include Joe Gibbons, Lee Katz, Emily Breer, Robert Hilferty, Eve Heller, and Roberto Juarez. Alongside this footage was an ongoing discussion with Charles Bernstein on the implications of working in video as opposed to film. Plus, one cold morning when nothing was working out, I addressed the camera directly in a (what seemed at the time desperate and harrowing but now seems Woody-Allen-ish) scene that is central to the final edit. The footage sat on my shelf haunting me for a decade and I decided in 1998 to use it to free myself from the past while at the same time learning to use home computer editing software. As my major appearance in my own work, it's perhaps endearing.

The edit is punctuated with 3/4" footage recording the December 1985 "live reenactment" of MONEY at Roulette, with John Zorn on birdcalls and alto, Cyro Baptiste on Brazilian percussion, the late Tom Cora on cello, Charles Noyes and Ikue Mori on drums, Jim Staley on trumbone, Butch Morris on cornet, Christian Marclay on turntables, and Alan Davies and Diane Ward on vocals, with movement by Pooh Kaye and Sally Silvers.

Igeous Ejaculation (music video for John Zorn's Naked City)
1990, 7.1 mb (MPG)

These films are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © Henry Hills. Used with permission of Henry Hills. Distributed by PENNSound and UbuWeb.

Notes

"I like to work in minute detail. In my hands composition is not really a temporal thing, rather it's spatial, a sculptural process. Hence a particular space is an apt topic. When I make films, my first rough cut is composed of relatively long shots, lots of space and a slower pace. I gradually add elements, interweaving them to increase the density and complicate the rhythm to keep it interesting for me. It has a strong correspondence to music and the kind of music I'm drawn to, similarly, is heavily rhythmic, multilayered with unpredictable changes. Although much of my editing is improvisational, it consists of levels upon levels of improvisation with a goal of keeping the rhythms irregular and the progression of imagery and ideas unpredictable, to mimic the rhythms of my own body and mind. By filling the space, I expand the time. And expanded it returns to me, available to be viewed over and over, somehow different every viewing." --Henry Hills

Biography

HENRY HILLS has made 22 short experimental films since 1975.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library (Donnell Media Center and Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library) , the Archives du Film Experimental d'Avignon, the Arsenal in Berlin, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Rocky Mountain Film Center, SUNY Buffalo, Bard College, Wayne State University, and the Miami-Dade Public Library.

He received an M.F.A. in filmmaking in 1978 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied with James Broughton, George Kuchar, and Hollis Frampton. His early San Francisco films (PORTER SPRINGS 1-3 and the NORTH BEACH series) are ornate, intensely rhythmic single-frame silent landscape studies. His first sound film, KINO DA!, a portrait of San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman reading in Russian and English cut-up into "zaums" and metrically reassembled à la Klebnikov, is frequently screened in filmmaking classes.

Upon moving to New York in 1978 he began an association with the "Language" poets and with the first generation Downtown improvised music scene. MONEY (1985) documents these movements of the early 80s with an all-star artist cast, while simultaneously developing parallel formal innovations. One of the densest sync-sound films ever made (2500 "scenes" in 15 min), MONEY, which remains entertaining today, was the culmination of a string of radically formal investigatory studies (PLAGIARISM and RADIO ADIOS) into the possibilities of sound/image sync. Production of MONEY was supported by grants from the NEA and the New York State Council on the Arts. The film was accompanied by an equally experimental book, MAKING MONEY (Roof Books, NYC, 1986), published with assistance of a 1986 grant from NYSCA.

In the late 80s he began incorporating the results of his formal investigations into more widely accessible thematic works. SSS, his radiant 1988 dance film, converts the rubble of a decayed Lower East Side into a joyous playground. BALI MÉCANIQUE presents the rhythms and rituals of that Paradise island through a recreation of a Legong performance. LITTLE LIEUTENANT recreates the optimism and ambiguities of the Weimar era through innovative usage of rear screen projections. HERETIC, a pseudo-trailer composed from outtakes from a low-budget feature (THE GENIUS by Joe Gibbons and Emily Breer) starring Karen Finley, cleverly explodes a number of narrative tropes while satirizing the psychotherapeutic experience. MECHANICS OF THE BRAIN, a "remake" of Pudovkin's first film (a documentary on Pavlov's experiments), is a dance film in the guise of a science documentary; the original Zorn soundtrack is available on FILMWORKS VI (Tzadek). With PORTER SPRINGS 4 (a family portrait composed from footage shot and sounds recorded over 30 years) and A NEW LIFE (a video resolving a project abandoned 10 years ago) his work took a more personal, emotional turn.

He is currently releasing sections from his DV exploration EMMA'S DILEMMA. In progress since 1997. NERVOUS KEN is a portrait of filmmaker Ken Jacobs and KING RICHARD a portrait of playwright Richard Foreman.

Hills has frequently collaborated with composer John Zorn and choreographer Sally Silvers. He directed several music videos for Zorn's all-star band Naked City (who also supplied original music for HERETIC). Silvers, after appearing in a number of Hills' films, choreographed and co-directed LITTLE LIEUTENANT (partially produced with 1992 Dance Film funding from the NEA), a festival favorite and winner of numerous awards,which was storyboarded and cut to a Zorn arrangement of a Kurt Weill song. MECHANICS OF THE BRAIN (partially funded the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts) is their second collaboration.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Hills received his B.A. in English from Washington & Lee University. He was a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam war. From 1977-80, Hills edited CINEMANEWS, a West Coast film journal. Throughout his career he has been active as a curator, organizing programs at Anthology Film Archives, Millennium, Collective for Living Cinema, Roulette, Segue and various clubs and galleries. He served on the board of the Film-Makers' Cooperative from 1985-88, was Executive Director of The Segue Foundation--a non-profit literary arts organization--from 1984-1993, directed and edited a 1990 compilation documentary--ELEKTRA 40 YEARS--celebrating the record label's anniversary, was President of Hip's Road--a non-profit new music foundation--from 1992-93, and has worked extensively on the Avid Media Composer--as one of the editors of LOOKING FOR RICHARD by Al Pacino (winner of the 1995 A.C.E. Award for Best Editing of a Documentary), on numerous music videos (including Patti Smith, Moby, and Kronos Quartet), as chief editor for the Burly Bear Network--the college cable division of Broadway Video, as editor on the HOWARD STERN RADIO SHOW on CBS (98-99 season), & as editor of the Austrian documentary feature IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN and the Guatemalan narrative feature WHAT SEBASTIAN DREAMT. He has been a member of the faculty in film at the Pratt Institute and the San Francisco Art Institute and at FAMU in Prague.

RESOURCES:

Henry Hills Homepage