Henry Hills
Experimental Filmmaker
Experimental Filmmaker
► COMMUTE
“It's pretty redundant to say than an experimental filmmaker is underrated. But Henry Hills is a major American artist who hasn't always received his due. Like Abigail Child, Hills emerges as part of the downtown NYC scene of the 80s, and also like Child, he has straddled a number of different worlds. He has connections to the Language Poets, as well as the avant-jazz coterie that formed around John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and Elliott Sharp.
“All this goes some way toward explaining why Commute is a special film. It's a super-cut of sorts, comprised of shots out the windows of moving trains, so most of what we see is the blur of motion, with the tracks serving as a frame of reference. At times it resembles late Ernie Gehr, especially his Auto-Collider series.
“But what sets Hills's film apart is his deceptively complex editing, the way light and dark, horizontal and diagonal lines, and differing velocities play off each other, generating a wide array of painterly effects. More than this, Commute matches every shot with a musical excerpt, some song or orchestral work that has to do with trains. He includes everything from Bob Dylan and Roy Acuff to Arthur Honneger and the Beastie Boys.
“Appropriately enough, the one piece of music Hills uses most often is Steve Reich's orchestral masterpiece Different Trains. This film executes the expected play between abstraction and representation, the fact that we know what we're seeing but have to disable our nominative faculties to actually see what's on screen. But more than this, Hills is considering the role of program music, the tension between pure sound and semiotic musical meaning. It's a musical poem in which signification dips in and out, the junction of Hugo Ball and the highball.”
Michael Sicinski
Ken Jacobs on MONEY:
“MONEY, can’t get it out of my mind. Of course these people who needed money like everyone else went their own way, rewards or not. Your pinning the title on them is recognition of that. You capture more than a generation, the determination of artists in every generation. I've seen the film before but thought it time to tell you what I think. Not only is it beautiful, catching so much (including the fruit stores, etc.), it will remember all these people determined to be!
“Really, if no other film survives let this one. And thank you, dear Henry, for your exquisite and mighty art.’
August 27, 2024