Directing
Ian Hugo
Born — Died
1898-02-15 — 1985-01-07
Place of birth
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Known for
Directing
Credits
14 titles
Ian Hugo was born Hugh Parker Guiler in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1898. His childhood was spent in Puerto Rico—a "tropical paradise," the memory of which stayed with him and surfaced in both his engravings and his films. He attended school in Scotland and graduated from Columbia University, where he studied economics and literature. Hugo was working with the National City Bank when he met and married author Anais Nin in 1923. The couple moved to Paris the following year where Nin's diary and Guiler's artistic aspirations flowered. Guiler feared his business associates would not understand his interests in art and music, let alone those of his wife, so he began a second, creativ…
Known for
From an underwater grotto the "guru" arrives to preside over birth from a mineral cave, then to guide the new-born, first through endless doors and corridors, then monstrous jaws and barricades that cause the fragmentation of the woman. Then she emerges from the test by fire, saved and made whole again by water and the "guru" who continues on through the final apertura.
Apertura
1970
NRexperimental short
Transmigration
1973
NRThe elements of Ai-Ye (Mankind), by the noted etcher & engraver Ian Hugo, consist of footage shot in various parts of the South American Coast. From this rich and ageless material he has created a beautiful, moving allegory of Man's universal story through the milleniums. This vivid, experimental documentary film has a sound accompaniment of drums and native chants improvised by Osbourne Smith.
Ai-Ye
1950
NRExperimental film by Ian Hugo
Aphrodisiac I
1971
6.01972 Experimental film by Ian Hugo (Hugh Parker Guiler) starring Yass Hakashima and Renate Boué of the Yass Hakoshima Movement Theatre. Cinematography: Bob Hanson; Music: David Horowitz
Levitation
1972
NRInspiration for Stan Brakhage's THE DEAD. Screened at 1958 Brussels Film Festival
Melodic Inversion
1958
Behind the camera
From an underwater grotto the "guru" arrives to preside over birth from a mineral cave, then to guide the new-born, first through endless doors and corridors, then monstrous jaws and barricades that cause the fragmentation of the woman. Then she emerges from the test by fire, saved and made whole again by water and the "guru" who continues on through the final apertura.
Apertura
1970
NRexperimental short
Transmigration
1973
NRThe elements of Ai-Ye (Mankind), by the noted etcher & engraver Ian Hugo, consist of footage shot in various parts of the South American Coast. From this rich and ageless material he has created a beautiful, moving allegory of Man's universal story through the milleniums. This vivid, experimental documentary film has a sound accompaniment of drums and native chants improvised by Osbourne Smith.
Ai-Ye
1950
NRExperimental film by Ian Hugo
Aphrodisiac I
1971
6.01972 Experimental film by Ian Hugo (Hugh Parker Guiler) starring Yass Hakashima and Renate Boué of the Yass Hakoshima Movement Theatre. Cinematography: Bob Hanson; Music: David Horowitz
Levitation
1972
NRInspiration for Stan Brakhage's THE DEAD. Screened at 1958 Brussels Film Festival
Melodic Inversion
1958
Experimental film by Ian Hugo
Aphrodisiac II
1972
NRExisting in a liminal space, breasts float among various bodies of water. A literal description that doesn't do it justice...
Luminescence
1976
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Through the Magiscope
1969
5.4A perfect fusion of poetry and film, with dense layered imagery and music from electro pioneers Louise and Bebe Barron. The writer Anaïs Nin provides dialogue from her novella “House of Incest” and appears adrift in the undersea realm of Atlantis before ascending to dry land.
Bells of Atlantis
1952
NRA pulsating city symphony of light, movement, and electronic music, transforming Times Square in the 1950s into what Hugo’s wife, the writer Anaïs Nin, called "an ephemeral flow of sensations.”
Jazz of Lights
1954
NRA film study of Venice in all seasons, made from scenes shot from a gondola.
The Gondola Eye
1963
NRFilm by Ian Hugo.
Ian Hugo, Engraver and Filmmaker
1972
NRA film of two dimensions, the horizontal and the frontal, which are juxtaposed to introduce a third plane, the central. With sound and color, each plane depicts movements which portray the familiar sights of Venice.
Venice Etude No. 1
1962