- informational post -

In terms of essayistic films - in case you're in Rotterdam or 
Washington, D.C. in the next little while...
________

"Building Heaven, Remembering Earth: Confessions of a Fallen Architect is
unequivocally the best documentary work to be produced in Canada in 
1999."
- Peter Wintonick, Contributing Editor, POV Magazine, Toronto, Canada

"...a shockingly beautiful digital video essay on the philosophy of
architecture." Mari Sasano, SEE magazine.

Building Heaven, Remembering Earth: Confessions of a Fallen Architect
- 2003

re-edited and refashioned for DVD - 97 minutes

Film/Video/DVD - Oliver Hockenhull  /   Music- Lisa Walker

Screening @ the Architectuur FilmFestival Rotterdam June 18 - 22 as part 
of
the Netherlands Architecture Biennale Rotterdam

See their great web sites

http://www.afrotterdam.nl
http://www.nai.nl/e

ALSO__________________________________________

E V O,  2003,  will be screening at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. on July 18.

"EVO is a visually daring  look at evolutionary theory that
comes off like a university course in paleobiology as taught by
Marshall McLuhan. "   Monday Magazine

______________________________
  E V O  is a feature digital essay (also versioned as an installation)
  on questions of Evolution and
  Consciousness and features eminent Evolutionist/Oxford Professor/Author
  Dr. Richard Dawkins  (The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, …)
  ______________________________


  The work has been presented as a linear 78 minute film (in Amsterdam 
IDFA,
Vancouver International Film Festival, Toronto Hot Docs Festival, 
etc. ) -
in a DV or a Beta-Sp version but it has also been
  presented as a continuous variable play DVD installation (at the 2003
European Media  Arts Festival - Germany).

Essay or Documentary or New Media Installation?

  The work is linearly 78 minutes...but it is also edited in 5 different
  versions...as mutate edit versions - these variable/stochastic edit
versions also
  includes continuously added new material inserts ++additional only DVD
  material (aritificial life freeware/pdf files/Haeckel's organisms).

  In Germany it was shown continuously for 4 days in a 15 c domincian
church...

Ideally it should be presented as a usual screening...and also as an
  installation - in its variable mode - on a wide screen plasma monitor.

___________________

Distribution East:
V-tape
Wanda Vanderstoop [log in to unmask]
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 452
Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8
(416) 351-1317
(416) 351-1509

Distribution West:
Video In Studios/Video Out Distribution
1965 Main Street Vancouver BC V5T 3C1
Tel. 604.872.8449  Fax. 604.876.1185
Demian Petryshyn
[log in to unmask]


____________________________
  "E V O can only  be called 'documentary-like' because Hockenhull has
  used a delightful mix of reality and artifice to get at bigger and
  deeper questions than documentary itself is normally capable of.  He
  layers in fantastic imagery, CG collages, ticker tape texts, and
  punctuating audio rhythms to take
  documentary and essay filmmaking to a whole new level of commentary
  and observation."
  VIFVF
  ______________________________

  "A visually playful, fiercely intelligent exploration of the history
  and future of evolutionary theory and its impact on human society...
  Packed with striking concepts and intricately compsoed
  imagery, E V O, hums with energy and insight."
  Vancouver International Film Festival - Elan Mastai
  ______________________________
  "...A wealth of information and intellectual constructs.  The most
  amazing thing is how he touches on so many aspects of evolution in the 
same
  movie. A fascinating voyage..." - Katherine Monk, The Vancouver Sun
  ______________________________
EVO is a visually daring documentary look at evolutionary theory that
comes off like a university course in paleobiology as taught by
Marshall McLuhan. The brainchild of Oliver Hockenhull (Aldous Huxley:
The Gravity of Light, Building Heaven, Remembering Earth), the eerie and
often beautiful EVO builds from  footage of renowned scholars discussing
Darwin’s theories and the famed
Burgess Shale—a fossil bed whose abundant diversity contradicts the
"incremental" notion of Darwinism and gave rise to the notion that
evolution staggered along via "punctuated equilibrium." If this seems a
tad dry, its treatment verges on the wild: much of the material gets an
impressionistic visual treatment as it segues into provocative
speculations involving politics, genetics and wormholes.
Monday Magazine
  ______________________________________________-

  E V O
  -  a philosophical, whimsical, visually radical investigation.  It
  includes imagery created with hacked C.G. software, inflections of
  artificial life algorithms and fractal generators.

  -  a study and reflection on the history and future of evolutionary
  theory, its meaning to humans, with a focus on the question of
  contingency as argued by Naturalist Stephen J. Gould in his best seller
"Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

  - stars a Sony Neoteny CyberGeisha with a nostalgic robotic voice
  implant, Dr. Desmond Collins, Senior Curator/palaeontologist of the
  Royal Ontario Museum, a London based gorilla, Delacroix's Liberty, the
Rocky Mountains of Canada, and Dr. Richard Dawkins - the eminent
  evolutionist, acclaimed author and Oxford Professor. The work also 
reflects
on some  of the key historical personages of evolution  - Charles Darwin 
and
his principal European disciple: Ernst Haeckel of Jena, Germany.
  ______________________________

  The DVD version of E V O is a proto type, a work that from the
  beginning of its inception recognized the rhetorical richness allowed
  by the hypermedia aspect of the DVD medium.  E V O takes advantage of
  the modular/chapterization process of authoring in DVD to construct
  numerous alternative structures/edits of the documentary.

  Viewers watch versions of the work.  When they see it again they can
  see a variation of it by selecting one of the 'mutatedit' versions.
  With a work like E V O that, because of the amount and complexities of
  information presented, repeated viewings are of value, variations, are
  also of advantage, as the information is then reconstituted in
  surprising and inspiring ways.

  The DVD version of E V O  contains a folder that  (only available via
  a computer) that allows users to learn more about evolutionary theory
  via ALIFE programs, weblinks, PDF files, and some of the art work of
  Ernst Haeckel

  The mutatedit programming on E V O - is a basic syntactical tool

  Technical and aesthetic lectures on the innovations of E V O presented
  at The Centre for Innovative Teaching,  Interactive Futures, University 
of
Victoria, invited to present at  the  EMAF, Germany, NEXT 2.0 in Sweden, 
and
  at Fluid Non-Fiction @ Hot Docs 2003.
  ______________________________