Early on in vulture, a child declares: “Vultures live together, and they don’t fight—they help each other.” Like many of Philip Hoffman’s films, vulture is a rumination on alternative ways of thinking, doing, and being together. Since 1994, Hoffman has led the Independent Imaging Retreat (colloquially known as Film Farm) in Ontario, guiding filmmakers to incorporate place-based methods and eco-processing in their work. Hoffman’s own films thematize artistic practice as a conscious engagement with the surrounding environment, carefully surveying the local flora and fauna and subtly breaking down the barriers between human, plant, and animal. By extensively using local plants in the processing of filmic material, the films themselves serve as a poetic expression of an ecosystem at work. In the images and the processes that allow for their emergence, Hoffman meditates on shared experience and how we can collectively care for the environments in which we live.
The Carsey-Wolf Center is proud to welcome filmmaker Philip Hoffman to the Pollock Theater for a presentation of three of his films: Deep 1 (2023, 15 minutes), vulture (2019, 57 minutes), and endings (2024, 9 minutes). After the screening, Hoffman will join moderator Alex Lilburn (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of his work.