NEW SHORES

Jerome Hiler (b. 1943) has been making films since 1964. For most of his life, he has only been sharing his work with an inner circle of friends and colleagues at his home. Soon after relocating from New Jersey to San Francisco in 1972, Hiler began to work in stained glass, an art and craft that combined his love of painting, luminous colour and projected light. Starting in 2010, he has been screening and distributing new work and some that incorporates earlier footage. He has been shown at many film festivals. In 2012, his Words of Mercury was included in the Whitney Museum's Biennial. Retrospectives were also held at the New York Film Festival and the Harvard Film Archive.

Filmografia
Two Personal Gifts (1966-67) con Nathaniel Dorsky
Library (1970) con Nathaniel Dorsky
Gladly Given (1997)
Target Rock (1969-2000)
Seasons of a Mountain Vineyard (2003)
Music Makes a City (2010) con Owsley Brown III
Words of Mercury (2011)
In the Stone House (1967-70/2012)
New Shores (1971-87/2014)
Bagatelle II (1964-2016)
Marginalia (2016)
Bagatelle I (2016-2018)
Ruling Star (2019)
Cinema Before 1300 (2023)
Careless Passage (2024) film.

a programme curated by Federico Rossin and Rinaldo Censi

“A kind of magick”: a Few Short Notes on Jerome Hiler*

In a short sequence from In The Stone House (1967-2012), a rattlesnake can be seen coiling on a rock. Rattlesnakes in New Jersey? I believed they were only found in Arizona, or Texas. Or possibly California. Why film it? In an interview by Algarín Navarro and Carlos Saldaña, published in their Illuminated Hours. The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler by Lumière, Hiler recalls what happened. His lifetime partner and associate Dorsky, also a film-maker, was intently sunbathing on a rock, close to the titular stone house. When he woke up, reptiles were keeping him company as they enjoyed the first spring sun (the structure of Hiler’s films is often determined by the cycle of the seasons). He runs like hell and, as soon as he gets home, tells Hiler what just happened. Hiler is doubtful. Dorsky was high on LSD. He goes out with his Bolex to see for himself. And no, it wasn’t a hallucination. One of those rattlesnakes was captured on film, in a fairly tremulous shot (due to his telephoto lens, and, I guess, fear).
In Hiler’s interview, a recurring fact defines an era and an attitude of filmmakers during that particular historical period, the 1960s. Namely, their heavy use of cannabis and other drugs. A habit that persisted over time. It might seem a mundane detail, and yet, in my opinion Jerome Hiler’s films recreate the state of mind that reminds sensory alteration. A sort of magic. A regime of attractions. Superimpositions. Colour variations. A pacing – in all of his films – captures this practice, that has been blamed (in the strict sense) since the Age of Enlightenment, as a synonym of ignorance. Instead, in a broader sense, it was appreciated. Magic is the driving force behind civil and artistic progress. As per Watelet and Lévesque’s Dictionnaire des Arts. The magic of the arts.
In The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, De Quincey claimed to be the first person to discover terrae incognitae. There are pages in his book that qualify as almost cinematic. A sort of superimpositions in which space is transformed: “Positively, in one line of communication to the south of Holborn, for foot passengers (known, I doubt not, to many of my London readers), the road lay through a man's kitchen; and, as it was a small kitchen, you needed to steer cautiously, or else you might run foul of the dripping-pan.” Is cinema a magical summoning?
Robertson and his Magic Lantern. Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon. Or, Diderot before a Chardin: This magic is completely beyond comprehension. “There are thick layers of colour put on one over another, and the effect is that they transpire upwards from below. At other times one would say that it is a vapour that has been blown on to the canvas; somewhere else a light foam that has been thrown on it. […] Go close: everything blurs, flattens and disappears. Step back: everything takes on form and being again.” These few lines remind me of Words of Mercury (2010-2011).
Is the magic of cinema similar to that of painting? (Hiler started out as a painter). Small doses of colour turn into flesh, clothing, light. Here, a chemical process develops and clots the silver salts. The result is bodies, atoms, a certain complexion, some objects. Landscapes. Image and matter. The projection of light enlarges and modulates what we see on the surface of a tiny film frame. The transparency of the film stock, so similar to the that of medieval stained glass, which Hiler has always studied with admiration.
Superimpositions become Mozart. There is a certain levity, something impalpable that flows, in Hiler’s films. A certain capacity of dealing with time, drawing musicality from it, a bit like from deep-sea species: moments of sheer illusion, thanks to the play of superimpositions. Art and magic are consubstantial.
Nothing could be farther from the concept of film diary, or filming reality: these films tell us that life is a dream, or a trip. Hiler is a discoverer of terrae incognitae.

“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth." Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia - Reflections from the damaged life

Rinaldo Censi

• The phrase “A kind of magick” was used by Joshua Reynolds in his recollection of Thomas Gainsborough (see Discourses on Art, XIV, 1788).

edited by Federico Rossin

AUDIENCE

I’m not trying to entertain. I’m more interested in creating a flow of images that engage others enough that they can import them into their minds and make whatever they want with them. I definitely consider what I do as one part of a duet and I want the other part to be there. […] Try your best to enjoy the simple act of watching a film. Don’t strain to read the film, as if there is a message that I’m hiding from you for some reason.

BOLEX

I think it’s one of the most handsome machines that’s ever been made. It’s like a little steam locomotive, right in your own hands. And it does so many things. Unlike many other cameras, you can look through it and see exactly what you’re going to be shooting. […] Seeing the camera itself was an inspiration, because it looked like some treasury that contained all sorts of magical riches within it.

CATEGORY

Some filmmakers lean toward poetry, some toward drama, some toward a kind of documentary and others bring an experiential, visceral presence into the viewing room. I would be hard-pressed to fit myself into a category except to say that I am so grateful that there is a way for filmmakers of all kinds to be seen – and, particularly, that one doesn’t have to fit into a category.

COLOUR

I am sure that my approach to colour in my films has its origins in collage. Much of my film work is an extension of my earlier work as a painter and visual artist. Having a primarily visual background, I brought that concern to film work. Colour is very important to my films.

DANCE

I just have more of a, maybe a dance-like thing. I’m there and I’m moving around, that sort of thing. I’m more dancing with the environment than contemplating the environment. I have always marvelled at how a film re-sets the way you see the world afterward. A film can direct your attention in the subliminal ways and have you continuing it into your own life.

DIARY

I don't know who came up with that word, diaristic, but I don't think it's particularly a great word. Diaries are private things, and so it's a sort of looking-down thing. […] I certainly did not regard what I did as any kind of diary-keeping. Regardless of the personal subjects, I always hoped that the end result would transcend home movies.

DREAM

My films serve the same function as the dream state, where images of our days are re-arranged according to needs unknown to our ordinary sense of order. […] I would say that every one of my films checks into a staid, ordered, uncomplicated place and soon takes off into a floating world that de-solidifies any notions of stability. In my daily-life perspective, that refers to the highly subjective way each of us live in our private version of ‘reality’.

ETHICS

My artistic world is a gentle, uplifted and caring place. My role is to be true to myself and to share my work with those whose spirits could resonate with that. I think that what I can give is needed right now. I don’t expect to be appreciated by everybody, but that is simply in the nature of things.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Of course, we have to experiment. I can’t think of any other art or practice that doesn’t involve experimentation. But, it could denigrate the work of a filmmaker as being less than significant. Filmmakers work as hard as any other artists and don’t need to duck behind a term to excuse us from cosmic law.

IMPRESSIONISM

I see film with its swirling emulsion as being akin to something like impressionist painting. I refer to the image quality. It's soft. I'm not saying that I'm interested in being an impressionist, per se, but there's an excitement in the colours.

INFLUENCES

I think the most overt influences came through Marie Menken and Nathaniel Dorsky. Marie's sense of bodily presence and sculptural envelopment of the scene was very powerful for me. And Nathaniel, well, we were filming for one another. He was the most important viewer for me, and what I saw of his sank in like nothing else.

INTENTIONS

I think film viewers tend to think that everything was intentional. “Why did he put that? Why did he do that kind of thing?” I think, with me, most of the intentionality comes in the editing. It’s how you organize those things, and in a way, that’s why you end up repeating yourself, because you just are the same person.

MUSIC

I think my films are more akin to music than poetry. Some musicians can tell me what tempos and dance forms my works employ. My subject matter is so truly personal that I doubt anyone else could follow a “narrative.”

OUTDOORS

Whatever I might plan to do will inevitably meet with a bigger reality than my wishes. The best I can hope to do is to be faithful to a mental image or instinct. There are times when I encounter something completely unforeseen and go with that. Shooting this way sets up a dance or dialogue between the indifference of external events and the manoeuvrability of an internal choice.

PAINTING

I definitely wanted to be a painter. […] I don’t know whether or not I could actually call myself a filmmaker. I use film, but I’m still a painter by instinct. Now, when you add time to a painting it becomes something akin to the flow of thought. It has to do with mental sequence.

RANDOM

I generally wander at random. Driving in my car – particularly in places that I don’t know, hoping to get lost. I will react to a location. I don’t set out to make a statement, rather I learn and am tutored by the film as it develops. My film has more to say to me in the long run than the reverse.

RESPONSIBILITY

I feel like it's such a serious responsibility to be a filmmaker, to respect that situation, to respect the audience, to respect the people who come. Because nobody's in charge of this thing. Not even the filmmaker is in charge. […] That isn't an ego trip. It's a responsibility.

RHYTHM

The idea is that everything I shoot should have a black background and not take up the whole frame. And then of course there are these rhythms of bringing [the colours] in and out, shoot for a while then let the roll be in blackness and then resume images later on, so that, like in a piece of music, themes appear for a bit and return sometime later. You have to learn to shoot that way.

SILENCE

My thoughts don’t make noise. They’re quite quiet in my head. And yet, they’re very powerful. You could say that my films are actually expressions of thought patterns, visual thought patterns. Then there’s the matter of rhythm. My films have their own kind of rhythm. It’s not something that I can add music to.

SPONTANEITY

I would say the principal role is spontaneity. I am always trusting. I only go forth with a sense of trust that what I am going to see, encounter, what will attract my eye, and so forth, will be of significance or not. I just like to interrelate with things.

SUPERIMPOSITIONS

Now, as far as superimpositions go, it’s very difficult, in a way, because you try to remember what is on a roll. Sometimes I’ll take notes and say, this is happening. […] You have to think in terms of introducing something to something else that you don’t quite know what it is, either. And that’s part of it. It’s part of how our minds work, or my mind works.

TIME

I think almost all my work is about aging. It’s about time passing. Everything seems to go through some kind of thing. […] I think almost any film I worked on has to do with the transformation that time brings about — almost everything. I don’t even do it consciously. I just look back now and I say, “Look at that, look at that.” It all connects.

These statements by Jerome Hiler were taken from the following interviews:
Will Epstein, Nathaniel Dorsky & Jerome Hiler (2024)
Max Goldberg, Return to Form. An Interview with Jerome Hiler (2012)
Martin Grennberger and Daniel A. Swarthnas, Interview with Jerome Hiler (2017)
Maximilien Luc Proctor, “The world is not a solid, intractable thing” — An Interview with Jerome Hiler (2021)
Mac McGinnes, Hidden in Plain Sight: Jerome Hiler in Conversation (2020)
Maxwell Paparella, What the World Is, Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler (2024)
Will Rose, Interview with Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky (2021)
Hannah Yang, An Interview with Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky (2024)