Biography
In thirty years, Peter Hutton produced over twenty films – silent cinematic portraits of cities and landscapes from around the world. He also worked as a professional cinematographer. Hutton studied painting, sculpture and film at the San Francisco Art Institute. He taught filmmaking at Hampshire College, Harvard University, SUNY Purchase and was Chairman of The Bard College Film And Electronic Arts Program where he taught from 1984 until his untimely death in June of 2016.
Hutton’s work has been shown in major museums and festivals in the U.S .and Europe. He was the recipient of grants from National Endowment of the Arts, DAAD Berlin, Rockefeller Foundation, Dutch Film Critics Prize, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, among many others. (excerpted from Redcat program notes)
“Hutton’s exquisite images, precise, observational style, and use of long takes and silence encourage the mind to roam. These ships come to seem like inspiriting physical measures of mankind’s outsized capacity for hard work and boundless imagination, by which we overcome the isolation of the human condition.” – Film Comment
“…For thirty years now, Peter Hutton has been building a radical and singular body of work. A sort of primitive documentary, silent, which celebrates the beauty of the world without forgetting to observe people, the conditions they live and work under…” – Cahiers du cinéma
Related Events:
port | river | city
Time and Tide – A Tribute to Peter Hutton
September 23rd (12.30), Irish Film Institute
Film info:
Lodz Symphony, 1993, 20 min, Black & White, Silent, 16mm, Time and Tide, 2000, 35 min, Colour, Silent, 16mm; New York Portrait, Chapter II, 1981, 16 min, Black & White, Silent, 16mm
A major figure of American experimental cinema who died in June of last year, Peter Hutton was greatly influenced by his time working in the merchant marine. This tribute screening begins with Hutton’s portrait of New York in the 1970s, shot in the high contrast monochrome that defined his early career. This is followed by Time and Tide, a complex study of the relationship between man and sea, nature and industry, combining archive material with footage shot by Hutton aboard various vessels moving slowly through rivers and ports. The programme concludes with Lodz Symphony in which Hutton creates an empty world evoking the 19th century industrial atmosphere that is populated with the ghosts of Poland’s past.
Tickets available at: http://ifi.ie/ifi-aemi-projections-time-and-tide
Discount ticket to attend both IFI screenings available for €14 for members and €15.50 for non-members. See www.ifi.ie or visit IFI Box Office for further details.
