Mike Hoolboom★

movies, writing, dharma

Writings on Mike Hoolboom

Originally published in Arabeschi, Fall 2020 http://www.arabeschi.it/ri-scattare-le-immagini-dinfanzia-archivi-privati-e-performance-digitali-fra-ontologia-ricordo-disconoscimento/ The stories of Father Auditions (2019) turn around the figure of a parent. Its central section is a portrait of the Canadian director’s father, made a year and a half after his death. … Continue reading →

23 Thoughts About My Mother (31 minutes, 2021)

23 Thoughts About My Mother (31 minutes, 2021)

23 Thoughts about my Mother script Prelude image: nuns, little girl with light sparkles, then baby crawls on floor with human sleeping, photo: Mom and child Her earliest memory. A pair of women in luxurious hats, the sound of glass … Continue reading →

23 Thoughts About My Mother (31 minutes, 2021)

In a series of 23 vignettes, the artist offers up memories of his mother who died in March 2020. If offers a mix of analog snaps and diary footage (brain surgery, nursing homes), along with archival material from her former … Continue reading →

We Are Islands (4:30 minutes, 2021)

We Are Islands (4:30 minutes, 2021)

We are Islands script She wanted to meet the storm. But there was someone else, a boy, a young man. He had some beautiful bruises coming in. The girl’s name was a sharp pain on his tongue. The storm had … Continue reading →

We Are Islands (4:30 minutes, 2021)

Based on texts gleaned from Catherine Bush’s novel Blaze Island, this multi-layered collage offers a fleeting love story on a distant shore. The novel reimagines Shakespeare’s last testament, The Tempest, now set on a fictionalized version of Fogo Island, a … Continue reading →

The Guy On The Bed (3:50 minutes, 2021)

The Guy On The Bed (3:50 minutes, 2021)

The guy on the bed script The guy on the bed takes two breaths I have hold of one leg and his sister one hand and we’re sobbing. I’m amazed at how quietly he dies how beautiful everything is with … Continue reading →

The Guy On The Bed (3:50 minutes, 2021)

News from another pandemic, the one that ‘changed everything’ before it fell out of the news cycle and collective memory, except for the newly infected, or those who, like myself, managed a new life after death. Based on a text … Continue reading →