Jerome Hiler

Projecting films at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque on Bruce Conner, Andy Warhol and Harry Smith

Warren Sonbert described Divided Loyalties as a film 'about art vs. industry and their various crossovers.' According to film critic Amy Taubin, "There is a clear analogy between the filmmaker and the dancers, acrobats and skilled workers who make up so much of his subject matter." -- Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

More than eight hundred years ago, a confluence of technological, philosophical, and financial upswellings converged to create the most advanced form of mass media the world had known: stained glass. Jerome Hiler’s passion for medieval stained glass impacted his filmmaking practice and led to a fascinating evolving lecture, “Cinema Before 1300”

Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.

Experimental short subject preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, in 1998.

“Now that I’m in motion again, I look forward to the passage from this life to future wanderings in unknown places. My film alludes to and appreciates the encounters that flow without ceasing as we move through our personal version of reality” (Jerome Hiler).

More than eight hundred years ago, a confluence of technological, philosophical, and financial upswellings converged to create the most advanced form of mass media the world had known: stained glass. Jerome Hiler’s passion for medieval stained glass impacted his filmmaking practice and led to a fascinating evolving lecture, “Cinema Before 1300”

Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.

“Now that I’m in motion again, I look forward to the passage from this life to future wanderings in unknown places. My film alludes to and appreciates the encounters that flow without ceasing as we move through our personal version of reality” (Jerome Hiler).

"Shot in early 1990 on outdated Ektachrome reversal stock, Acid Rock exists only in the original (that is, Hiler has never made a print of it), and consists of three 100' reels of film unedited, a 9-minute film of dazzling beauty and incandescent imagery. What Jerome Hiler accomplishes with this brief film is little short of alchemy. Everyday objects, places, thing, and people are transformed into integers of light, creating a sinuous tapestry of restless imagistic construction. Acid Rock (so named because a huge rock with the word "acid" emblazoned on it drifts briefly past the camera during the opening moments of the film) displays the best qualities of abstract expressionist experimental cinema in that it transmutes perceptual reality into a zone of ineluctable transcendence, causing the images to perceptibly burst forth from the surface of the screen." - WWD

In the Stone House records and recollects a period of life of four years in rural New Jersey. In the latter 1960s, two young guys with monastic leanings leave the clatter of Manhattan’s art and film scene to catch the wave of higher consciousness that was about to change the world forever to find themselves washed ashore in a place only slightly updated from Way Down East. The monastic retreat quickly turned into the weekend getaway for a host of extravagant Manhattanites seeking films and fun. We learned from hitch-hiking guests that the police referred to our haven as “the stone house.” —Jerome Hiler

“For one thing, this was my first film using negative stock after a lifetime of shooting color reversal. This was a time when I had to open up to a greater freshness of purpose. I had to go forward into the unknown without a plan” (Jerome Hiler).

In 1948, a small, struggling, semi-professional orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky began a novel project to commission new works from contemporary composers around the world.

In 1948, a small, struggling, semi-professional orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky began a novel project to commission new works from contemporary composers around the world.

Commissioned by Frederick Eberstadt

"My only film shot in color negative… and its been a challenge, this sort of stock. […] The film is, to me, some kind of a rhapsody about California."

This film is to be projected at silent speed: 18 frames per second. Although "Marginalia" has no story, it reflects my concern with the feel of society at a time of ecological stress and cultural change. As usual, I have super-impositions which were shot in-camera as well as abrasions on the film surface which reflect the cursive waves of marginal notation and, also, situates hand-writing as a vanishing form of communication.

“Illuminated leaves from the sub rosa oeuvre of Jerome Hiler. Although the title is tinged with irony, this film is in fact a gift and a work of gifted seeing made perceptible. Fragile and challenging in its seeming simplicity, GLADLY GIVEN unfolds and bristles with the delicacy of a Japanese Floating World painting while being gravitationally drawn into the containments and accidents of the everyday.” –Mark McElhatten

"A portrait of a young painter, a friend of mine, who I also feature in Marginalia."

“With Bagatelle II, I seem to have come full circle by returning to the so-called polyvalent style of my earliest film endeavors from 50 years ago. The film actually includes material from all the intervening decades. It’s both up to the moment yet life-spanning, with a thread of deep affection for the special characteristics of 16mm film.” —Jerome Hiler

The seasons are of supreme importance to me, even in the Bay Area. With one exception, all my films follow a pattern of development from a stark "winter" beginning to a rich, flowering or "summer" conclusion. This is true even of the documentaries Music Makes a City and Seasons of a Mountain Vineyard. I always stored my footage of East Coast material according to season

“Misplacement” focuses on a social event — it looks like a funeral — with an implied but withheld story. The people Mr. Hiler films are familiar and yet elusive, animated by light and gone too soon.

Words of Mercury is a silent film projected at 18fps. It has many layers of super-impositions which were all shot in the camera. It moves from a stark wintery world and slowly develops into a place of overgrowth and richness that is almost suffocating and re-invites death.

NEW SHORES is a sister film to IN THE STONE HOUSE in many ways. Like the latter film, it consists of earlier footage edited in recent years. It could be seen as a sequel to IN THE STONE HOUSE especially since it begins with a cross-country journey to the West Coast, where I settled, and concludes with a visit, in 1987, to the “stone house” in rural New Jersey. Even though there is some sort of time line that can be imagined, the film stands on its own. It is simply a series of episodes that touch upon facets of living in a new area with new weather, new people, new identities and stubborn old fears. The Bolex camera goes to work across landscapes and living areas, workplaces and gatherings. A dance of images: can beauty partner with dread and death? It’s a film of the coexistences that percolate beneath the surface of ordinary events. A film of useless hopes and baseless fears.

“This modest little film completely turned me around. Up until that point I had been using the world to make a film, and what Jerome showed me was that the world itself, or life itself, could be the language of a film. That a film could be inside out, so to speak; that existence itself could become cinema” (Nathaniel Dorsky).