Hilary Harris

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Hilary Tjader Harris (born December 9, 1929 Jackson County , Iowa in the United States , † October 26, 1999 in New York City ) was an American film director , experimental and documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of time-lapse photography and kinetic sculptor . His documentary Seawards the Great Ships , produced by Templar Film Studios, won an Oscar at the 1962 Academy Awards.

biography

Harris made his first short film Pastoral in 1950 , which he backed with music by Johann Sebastian Bach . Influenced by László Moholy-Nagy's work, he took his two early short films Longhorns (1951) and Generation (1956) as an opportunity to explore the possibilities of abstract movement. In his following film, Highway (1958), his fast-moving images were aided by a rock and roll score. The footage shows a speeding car on the freeway and on bridges in and around New York. Harris was awarded a bronze medal for his work at the International Experimental Film Festival in Brussels in 1958.

As a result, he attracted the attention of the Scottish Film Board, which asked him to make a documentary about shipbuilding on the Clyde River in Glasgow. The film and producer of the short film Seawards the Great Ships received an Oscar .

In the 1960s and 1970s Harris ran a studio in Greenwich Village , where both experimental and documentary, industrial and animated films were made. His short film Nine Variations on a Dance Theme from 1966, in which he dealt with the dancer Bettie de Jong , received awards at various film festivals. In the documentary The Nuer 1971 Harris showed the Nuer , one of the Nilotic belonging group of African peoples who speak Nilotic languages and their common homeland in Southern Sudan is suspected.

Hilary Harris, who pioneered time-lapse photography, demonstrated this particularly in his 1975 film Organism , where this is the basic technique of his film. Harris moved to Woodstock , New York, in the 1980s , where he designed a house in the shape of a spaceship for himself. Furthermore, he put his labor into the development of a computer-oriented drawing machine. At this time he became seriously ill and died several years later of kidney failure in the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan as a result of the consequences of this illness . He was 69 years old.

Harris was married to Maxine Barnes Rochlin for the second time, and the marriage resulted in a son. He had two daughters with his third wife, Dena Crane.

Filmography (selection)

as a director of short films, unless otherwise stated

  • 1950: Pastoral
  • 1951: Longhorns
  • 1956: generation
  • 1958: Highway
  • 1961: Seawards the Great Ships (+ camera)
  • 1964: The Squeeze
  • 1965: Inside America (television mini-series, episode The Dynamic Eye ; dialogues)
  • 1966: Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (9 Variations on a Dance Theme)
  • 1971: The Nuer (documentary; + producer)
  • 1973: Element (camera)
  • 1975: Organism
  • 1980: Our Kosmos (2 episodes, special camera recordings):
    a) One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
    b) The Harmony of the Worlds
  • 1982: Tides (camera)
  • 1985: Ornette: Made in America (documentary; cameraman)

Awards (selection)

BAFTA Awards

Academy Awards 1962

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Stephen Holden : Hilary Tjader Harris, 69 Sculptor and Experimental Filmmaker In: The New York Times , November 3, 1999. sS nytimes.com (English)
  2. ↑ Hilary Harris sS birthcharts.astro-seek.com (English)
  3. ↑ The 34th Academy Awards | 1962 sS oscars.org (English)
  4. ↑ Hilary Harris sS magazine.milanodesignfilmfestival.com (Italian)
  5. ↑ Contact for Hilary Tjader Harris d. 1999 see norman.hrc.utexas.edu (English)
personal data
SURNAME Harris, Hilary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harris, Hilary Tjader (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director, nature filmmaker, cameraman and kinetic sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Jackson County , Iowa
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1999
Place of death New York City , United States