SSS

SSS

1988 · 7 min · ★ 9.2 · Documentary

SSS is composed from footage of movement improvised on the streets of pre-gentrified East Village by Sally Silvers, Pooh Kaye, Harry Shepperd, Lee Katz, Kumiko Kimoto, David Zambrano, Ginger Gillespie, Mark Dendy, and others, painstaking synched to music previously improvised for the project at Noise New York by Tom Cora (cello), Christian Marclay (turntables), and Zeena Parkins (harp). Beauty emerging from rubble. (Henry Hills)

Directed by Henry Hills

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HHHHHHHH · 2016
HHHH
★ 10.02016
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Avoiding traditional narrative structures, all images revolve in one way or another around the letter H.
Little LieutenantLittle Lieutenant · 1994
Little Lieutenant
★ 9.01994
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Little Lieutenant is a look back at the late Weimar era with its struggles and celebrations leading up to world war, a period piece. Scored to John Zorn's arrangement of the Kurt Weill song, "Little Lieutenant of the Loving God", and drawing its imagery both from the original song and its somewhat idiosyncratic rearrangement, the film presents an internal reading of Silvers' solo scored to the same musical piece, "Along the Skid Mark of Recorded History".
GothamGotham · 1990
Gotham
★ 8.01990
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A film set to "Batman" by Naked City. Taking the band’s name and first album cover as a clue, Henry Hills drew heavily on themes in WeeGee’s photographs, recreating many of his pictures in their actual Lower East Side/Little Italy locations.
In the Mirror of Maya DerenIn the Mirror of Maya Deren · 2002
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
★ 7.52002
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Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.
Mechanics Of The BrainMechanics Of The Brain · 1997
Mechanics Of The Brain
★ 7.01997
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MECHANICS OF THE BRAIN is an experimental film in the form of a scientific documentary. A "remake" of the documentary film of the same name by Poudovkin (1926) on the work of Pavlov. Mechanics of the Brain presents 25 vignettes in 21 minutes, with an original soundtrack by John Zorn.
ArcanaArcana · 2010
Arcana
★ 5.52010
Movie
A globally composed, musically arranged montage-round: so Henry Hills’s arcana appears to be, a fulminant 30-minute cut-up epic that takes footage – both found and shot by the filmmaker – and crosses it in an almost arithmetic manner with a pre-arranged soundtrack. The basis is a written film treatment of the musician John Zorn, in which 254 scenes, bundled into 15 sequences, are captured in short, sometimes cryptic descriptions. Hills, very much in the style of a Harry Smith or Bruce Conner, has collected takes of radically differing origin for each of the 254 script directions and funneled them into a complexly ramified stream of associations. The sequence of scenes is underscored, or rather, interlocked, with pieces from the John Zorn composition The Bribe (1986), a musical tribute to crime fiction writer Mickey Spillane.
Social SkillsSocial Skills · 2021
Social Skills
★ 4.02021
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Henry Hills is among the film artists who, like filmmaker Abigail Child, marries frenetically fast image montage with split-second music and sound editing: the changes in rhythm and mood stream so fast they create a giddy delirium in the spectator. SOCIAL SKILLS provides Hills with the perfect subject: discontinuous fragments from a 60-day class in liberated body movement led by David Zambrano in Belgium. The soundtrack does the splits between disco funk and cartoon noise effects. Is it dance, childlike play, or the Utopian vision of a community of negotiated differences? It is all of these things at once.
Emma's DilemmaEmma's Dilemma · 2012
Emma's Dilemma
★ 1.02012
MovieDocumentaryHistory
Henry Hills’s Emma’s Dilemma reinvents the portrait for the age of digital reproduction. In a set of tour-de-force probes into the images and essences of such downtown luminaries as Richard Foreman, Ken Jacobs, and Carolee Schneemann, Hills’s cinematic inventions literally turn the screen upside down and inside out. In this epic journey into the picaresque, we follow Emma Bee Bernstein, our intrepid protagonist, from her pre-teen innocence to her late teen-attitude, as she learns about the downtown art scene firsthand. In the process, Hills reimagines the art of video in a style that achieves the density, complexity, and visual richness of his greatest films.
Radio AdiosRadio Adios · 1982
Radio Adios
1982
Movie
A superabundance of useless information effectively subdues freedom of speech. Condense and survive!
Failed StatesFailed States · 2008
Failed States
2008
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Boys love to spin until they collapse. Is the world then spinning out of control? Preparations for renegotiating the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Bali MécaniqueBali Mécanique · 1992
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1992
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A self-reflective study of the dance and rhythms of life in Bali, Bali Mécanique presents a luscious spectacle for the eye and a momentary vision of paradise for the soul. The casual documentary-style cinematography combines with an intricate jigsaw-puzzle-style of music-driven editing to create for the viewer a feeling of being in the center of the action.
The TreeThe Tree · 2019
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2019
MovieDocumentary
The tree here is an ancient American Elm standing in Tompkins Square Park in New York. It’s named 'The Hare Krishna Tree' because an Indian spiritual leader founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness nearby. Meticulously edited, frame by frame, the tree comes to life, more than 40 years after the images were shot.
North BeachNorth Beach · 1978
North Beach
1978
Movie
“North Beach is a beautiful film. The human race should stick around to enjoy it. It’s all cinema, all experience. No ‘problems,’ art in-jokes, other fashionable bluffing. Hills composes, orchestrates. The film’s a concentrate of rhythmic invention, solid work, shapely; gorgeous.” —Ken Jacobs
Double ElvisDouble Elvis · 2020
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2020
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A flickering structural examination of Elvis.
PlagiarismPlagiarism · 1981
Plagiarism
1981
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A raw documentary of New York "language poets" in their milieu.
Rudy Burckhardt: Man in the WoodsRudy Burckhardt: Man in the Woods · 2003
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2003
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A detailed look at a remarkable artist who died in 1999 at age 85. Aspects of Burckhardt's work in photography, film, and painting are examined in interviews with Rudy Burckhardt, painter Yvonne Jacquette, and curators Robert Storr (former Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Brian Wallis (Chief Curator, International Center of Photography, New York). In his studio in New York, Burckhardt discusses his photography and its significance within its historical framework. In the woods near his summer home in Maine, the viewer sees Burckhardt's easel and painting in front of the scene he is depicting. Whether in city or country, Burckhardt appreciated and transformed the chaos he discovered.

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