Uploaded March 2016 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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Philip Hoffman is a 2016 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Directed by Jenn E. Norton
Co-production / Coproduction : Canada Council for the Arts & Ed Video Media Arts Centre
Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
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Transcript:
What I tend to do is collect images over long periods of time. I have an archive of imagery, and the images sort of tell me which way to go.
I don’t really have a plan. My filmmaking is closer to playing a musical instrument, or dancing. or doing something that’s in the body.
The texture of stone, of water, of brick, of roads… this is kind of the texture of our everyday life. I see it as one of the layers that I lay down in my films in a way that a painter might lay down their first layer of paint.
The things that are throwaway within the commercial realm, that are discarded, I’m very interested in. Scratches and soft focus and all those sort of things that are issues in mainstream cinema, are things that I can access, that I can harness for expression.
The film farm is a project that started in 1994. We moved out here for the purpose of starting up a film-making workshop. Everyone has a film inside of them and they can make it anywhere. I think we get as much out of it as the people who come to the film farm – of which there have been many.
To me, film and photography helps me through my grief. It’s something that helps me through difficult time and joyful times. To collect, to archive, to have something I can go back to, is an important part of my filmmaking process. I’ve got tubs filled with film underneath the house that I always think: I may not use that now but I may use it in a future film.
I started using family snapshots to understand how the past lives in the present. That’s partially why I’m embracing the field of analog and digital, in that analog can live in the digital realm and how qualities of each medium can be harnessed and used.
Please subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Philip Hoffman is a 2016 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Directed by Jenn E. Norton
Co-production / Coproduction : Canada Council for the Arts & Ed Video Media Arts Centre
Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
***********
Transcript:
What I tend to do is collect images over long periods of time. I have an archive of imagery, and the images sort of tell me which way to go.
I don’t really have a plan. My filmmaking is closer to playing a musical instrument, or dancing. or doing something that’s in the body.
The texture of stone, of water, of brick, of roads… this is kind of the texture of our everyday life. I see it as one of the layers that I lay down in my films in a way that a painter might lay down their first layer of paint.
The things that are throwaway within the commercial realm, that are discarded, I’m very interested in. Scratches and soft focus and all those sort of things that are issues in mainstream cinema, are things that I can access, that I can harness for expression.
The film farm is a project that started in 1994. We moved out here for the purpose of starting up a film-making workshop. Everyone has a film inside of them and they can make it anywhere. I think we get as much out of it as the people who come to the film farm – of which there have been many.
To me, film and photography helps me through my grief. It’s something that helps me through difficult time and joyful times. To collect, to archive, to have something I can go back to, is an important part of my filmmaking process. I’ve got tubs filled with film underneath the house that I always think: I may not use that now but I may use it in a future film.
I started using family snapshots to understand how the past lives in the present. That’s partially why I’m embracing the field of analog and digital, in that analog can live in the digital realm and how qualities of each medium can be harnessed and used.
