Dana Hodgdon

In 1978, Northwestern University film professor Dana Hodgdon created an experimental film based on a phonetic alphabet. He recruited 45 students and faculty members to join him in speaking a single phoneme, which he filmed on 16mm color film. Each phoneme had an example that was an ideological loaded term: revolution, theory, language, Marx, Brecht, and so on. Then, using an optical printer, he excerpted the phonemes and edited them into words and sentences.

A blend of home movie and structuralist film

An acting and directing exercise gone wrong.

"A virtuoso display of all the Hodgdon concerns: language, film politics, and the demystification of the film illusion through jest." - Picture Start catalog entry

Shot in one continuous take and exclusively featuring Dana Hodgon's face and voice as he delivers an ironically edited monologue.

Dana seemingly records a fellow professor reading each word in an encyclopedia.

A conceptual film about the limits of the frame

The construction of a projected window in the basement.

North/South employs a dual split-screen format to present an interesting set of travels, one north (right) and one south (left), toward and away from the Loop on Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue, accompanied by seemingly natural sounds of traffic and car radios. - B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Reader

An experiment in synchronized sound

In 1978, Northwestern University film professor Dana Hodgdon created an experimental film based on a phonetic alphabet. He recruited 45 students and faculty members to join him in speaking a single phoneme, which he filmed on 16mm color film. Each phoneme had an example that was an ideological loaded term: revolution, theory, language, Marx, Brecht, and so on. Then, using an optical printer, he excerpted the phonemes and edited them into words and sentences.

A blend of home movie and structuralist film

An acting and directing exercise gone wrong.

Psycho, backwards and forwards

the life of buffalo bill cody and the history of cinema

A satirical look at suburban life via the "family Christmas letter."

One man's improbable journey through twentieth-century history.

A witty examination of the disjunction between the film's image and its soundtrack. Which voice belongs to which speaker? Each speaker makes certain claims about which voice is his. Later remarks contradict these claims and the viewer is left with a neat logical problem and an acute awareness of filmic illusion and structure.

A tongue-in-cheek look at masculinity and aggression.

"A virtuoso display of all the Hodgdon concerns: language, film politics, and the demystification of the film illusion through jest." - Picture Start catalog entry

Amanda, after testing positive for the BRCA gene mutation, has a specific plan to say goodbye to her breasts the weekend before her preventative double mastectomy, but her sister comes to town with a list of her own ideas for the weekend.

Shot in one continuous take and exclusively featuring Dana Hodgon's face and voice as he delivers an ironically edited monologue.

Screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival

Screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival