Oliver Hockenhull has been an acclaimed and prolific independent filmmaker and media artist for 35 years. His substantial and eclectic body of work includes half a dozen feature length essay films, and numerous mid length and short films, new media pieces and installations, interactive digital, video, web-based and hypermedia works, as well as co-editing and designing DAMP (2008), which took the pulse of Vancouver’s new media scene in book form. Even this list only scratches the surface of Hockenhull’s polymorphous pursuits.
At the title implies, his latest essay film, FOTO CINE MAMA & I, is both an autobiographical rumination on memory, and a philosophical disquisition on the technology of photography, cinema, and AI. Starting with a trove of family photos, Hockenhull explores how images function as mental constructs and ideological stamps. This film engages with Walter Benjamin’s ’optical unconscious’ and Ernst Jünger’s theories on self-objectification, drawing on milestones from photography’s history and contemporary artists like Jeff Wall.
Oliver Hockenhull
Canada
2024
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
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