Mike Hoolboom
Mike Hoolboom is a Canadian filmmaker, born in Toronto in 1959. A prolific filmmaker, he quickly established himself in the mid-1980s as one of the most refreshing and energetic forces in English-Canadian experimental cinema. Often intensely personal, Hoolboom's early films use autobiographical images and memories to rethink forms of media discourse. A critic, curator and filmmaker, he was diagnosed with HIV in 1989, which gave his work a "sense of urgency" and shifted the focus of his work from the personal to the broader political. Since then, he has made dozens of films, two of which won the Best Canadian Short Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (Frank's Cock in 1994 and Letters From Home in 1996). His films have also been screened at over 200 festivals around the world.
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Frank's Cock
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An anonymous narrator recounts how he met and fell in love with an older man, Frank, who is now HIV-positive on the eve of their 10th anniversary.
Scrapbook
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In the sixties, Jeffrey Paull gave a group of young people with autism the opportunity to film themselves and the world around them. Mike Hoolboom draws from this archive to continue Paull’s mission: to express the emotions of people who are condemned by the authorities and by other people’s perceptions, to live in silence. Donna Washington, a former patient, comments on the images and reports ...
Judy Versus Capitalism
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Since the 1970s, Judy Rebick has been the face of feminist struggles in Canada. For Mike Hoolboom, she's more a "living archive" of activism and struggles for the rights of all minorities, as well as an exceptional woman who has defied her own traumas all her life. Their privileged relationship gave birth to this film, a creative hybrid between documentary and experiment. A colossal work of arc...
Instructions for Robots
Made at the International Film School in Cuba (EICTV) at the start of the rainy season. A tender re-examination of bodies from the first generation of Artificial Intelligence robots programmed with a full range of emotions. Electronic revolt and resistance. Secret messages encoded within robot diary fragments offer possible futures for post-human societies.
Frank's Cock
Subscription access
An anonymous narrator recounts how he met and fell in love with an older man, Frank, who is now HIV-positive on the eve of their 10th anniversary.
Scrapbook
Subscription access
In the sixties, Jeffrey Paull gave a group of young people with autism the opportunity to film themselves and the world around them. Mike Hoolboom draws from this archive to continue Paull’s mission: to express the emotions of people who are condemned by the authorities and by other people’s perceptions, to live in silence. Donna Washington, a former patient, comments on the images and reports ...
Judy Versus Capitalism
Subscription access
Since the 1970s, Judy Rebick has been the face of feminist struggles in Canada. For Mike Hoolboom, she's more a "living archive" of activism and struggles for the rights of all minorities, as well as an exceptional woman who has defied her own traumas all her life. Their privileged relationship gave birth to this film, a creative hybrid between documentary and experiment. A colossal work of arc...
Instructions for Robots
Made at the International Film School in Cuba (EICTV) at the start of the rainy season. A tender re-examination of bodies from the first generation of Artificial Intelligence robots programmed with a full range of emotions. Electronic revolt and resistance. Secret messages encoded within robot diary fragments offer possible futures for post-human societies.
