Canada,
2001, 55 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
-
Philip Hoffman
- prod
-
Philip Hoffman
- scr
-
Philip Hoffman
- cam
-
Philip Hoffman
- editor
-
Philip Hoffman
- mus
-
Tucker Zimmerman
- source
-
Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, 37 Hanna Ave., Suite 220, Toronto, ON M6K 1W8, Canada. EMAIL: info@cfmdc.org
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Shown with Sea in the Blood. Philip Hoffman in person.
OTHER
In this poignant memoir, Canadian film diarist Philip Hoffman arranges the jagged bits of the life he shared with writer Marian McMahon. Her early death in 1996 provoked this essay on mortality. Hoffman’s goal: “to illuminate the condition of her death... the mystery of her life and the reason why, at the instant of her passage, I felt peace with her leaving... a feeling I no longer hold.” Using painterly swatches of sunflowers, hand-processed film, found sound recordings, the “antiseptic fictions” of doctors and other mortal icons, Hoffman takes us on journeys to London, Helsinki and Egypt. Pondering morbidity in its many forms, Hoffman discloses an early photographic assignment involving his deceased grandfather, a failed suicide and his own personal numerology of death centering on the number 17. Through these and other memories, Hoffman develops a soul-searching vocabulary of love for one whose journey continues into the beyond. “If you had to make up your own ritual for death, what would it be? Would it be private, or shared?” asked his partner, Marian. Hoffman’s answer is this beautiful document.
—Steven Black
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
