Mark (Mike Hoolboom, 2009)
Mark was a animal rights activist, cyclist, and video editor who used to edit Hoolboom's work. This video documents Mark's life through video images, still images, and through conversations with those close to him. Mark took his own life at the age of 35.
This was well done but I don't think I have much to say about it. I was struck instantly by the water imagery that punctuates this and so many of Hoolboom's films and videos. I think about the body, respiration, and mortality in these underwater images, borrowed, I think, from other films. Or maybe things out of our control. Severe things. Impossible things
In one moment Hoolboom shows an image of Anna Karina from the movie Vivre sa vie.... It's the scene where she's sitting in the cinema and she's watching The Passion of Joan of Arc and she has tears in her eyes. Which, I guess, makes the image a film within a film within a video. So much despair. So many moments of connection with an image when there is no body to connect to.
The slow motion images of the Mark's facial expression were affecting. A banal video clip was made lyrical through freeze frame and voice over. So much of Mark is on record. He wasn't afraid to be himself in front of the camera. Compared with Tom or Fascination I felt this is less fringe or experimental in its approach. But what sets it apart is that Hoolboom is very conscious about his approach. He said he wanted his friends to be able recall him without being crowded by the camera. He, instead films them through filters or gauze. He gives them space.
I've seen him at Q&As before but Hoolboom seemed a lot less at ease discussing this work. He almost seemed disappointed. Not that the film was a failure, but in the way that making a film like this successfully still leaves behind a lingering emptiness.
This was well done but I don't think I have much to say about it. I was struck instantly by the water imagery that punctuates this and so many of Hoolboom's films and videos. I think about the body, respiration, and mortality in these underwater images, borrowed, I think, from other films. Or maybe things out of our control. Severe things. Impossible things
In one moment Hoolboom shows an image of Anna Karina from the movie Vivre sa vie.... It's the scene where she's sitting in the cinema and she's watching The Passion of Joan of Arc and she has tears in her eyes. Which, I guess, makes the image a film within a film within a video. So much despair. So many moments of connection with an image when there is no body to connect to.
The slow motion images of the Mark's facial expression were affecting. A banal video clip was made lyrical through freeze frame and voice over. So much of Mark is on record. He wasn't afraid to be himself in front of the camera. Compared with Tom or Fascination I felt this is less fringe or experimental in its approach. But what sets it apart is that Hoolboom is very conscious about his approach. He said he wanted his friends to be able recall him without being crowded by the camera. He, instead films them through filters or gauze. He gives them space.
I've seen him at Q&As before but Hoolboom seemed a lot less at ease discussing this work. He almost seemed disappointed. Not that the film was a failure, but in the way that making a film like this successfully still leaves behind a lingering emptiness.