Andrew Hull

Andrew Mackenzie Hull (August 15, 1963 – May 8, 2010) was a Canadian-born film maker, film director and architect.

Hull worked as an architect in Paris in 1991 before moving to Dessau, Germany and later to Berlin. In Dessau, he worked video and animation projects and mentored students. In 1992, he was co-commissioned to make a documentary video, "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain". In Dessau, Hull also the 43 minute film Earworm, and presented the video installation, Berlin Alexanderplatz, at the Ostranenie International Video Festival.

In 1996, Hull returned to Canada, living in Toronto. He worked as an art director in film and television. He also wrote and directed his own short films, including Dizzy (2003) and That Thing We Do (2004). In 2003, he was invited to enter the director's program at the Canadian Film Centre. He graduated in 2004 with the short film Squeezebox, a tragicomedy starring Mary Margaret O'Hara. This was followed by the 5 minute short, Rewind. In 2008, Andrew re-located to London and begin production on his first feature film, Siren, The film was entitled "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain".

As a result of this collaboration, Hull moved to Germany, living first in Dessau, later in Berlin. He made films during this period and taught at the Bauhaus Dessau in the newly created Electronic Media Interpretation Studio. Hull's films from this time explored the genres of horror and comedy, the real and the fictional; they also documented and questioned the strained political and social transformations taking place in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Dessau, he made Earworm, a forty-three-minute film funded by both German and Canadian Arts Councils, that told the story of a group of anarchist karaoke enthusiasts gripped by a mysterious virus that causes an addiction to techno music and a taste for sucking the inner ear out of unsuspecting victims. The film could be read as a metaphor and biting satire on the paranoia of communist era East Germany, intertwined with the politics around HIV/AIDS, and the growing gay underground club and rave scene in Germany in the late eighties and early nineties. Hull also presented the video installation Berlin Alexanderplatz at the Ostranenie International Video Festival at the Bauhaus Dessau.

In 1996, Andrew Hull returned to Canada and lived in Toronto until 2008. While working as an Art Director in the Canadian/US Film and Television industry, he wrote and directed several of his own short films. Dizzy (Winner of Best Short at the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 2003) and That Thing We Do (Winner of Best Short at the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 2004) were made with assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and were coming-of-age stories directly based on his own experiences and diaristic writings. In 2003, Hull was one of eight students invited to enter the Director's Program at the Norman Jewison created Canadian Film Centre (CFC), Canada's foremost school for advanced training in film, television and new media. He graduated in 2004 with the short film Squeezebox, a tragicomedy starring Canadian cult rock heroine, actress and singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O'Hara. The film is the story of a teen accordion prodigy who struggles to reunite the family band after his father's suicide. Rewind, a five-minute film made shortly after Hull's graduation from the Canadian Film Centre, paid homage to film noir and was loosely based on Martin Amis' book Time's Arrow. All of Hull's films from this period went on to tour at film festivals around the globe.

In 2008, Andrew re-located to London, England, to be with his life partner, contemporary artist and painter, Shaan Syed, and to begin production on his first feature film, Siren, co-written with Canadian-born, US-based screenwriter Geoffrey Gunn. Siren, a horror / thriller genre film is an allegory on the Greek myth of the siren, and tells the tale of three friends whose lives are forever changed when they stop to rescue a beautiful young woman on a remote island. The film was produced by UK-based Poisson Rouge Pictures and was shot in Tunisia during the summer of 2009. The film's soundtrack features and is based on the Los Angeles all-girl group Warpaint's song, "Elephants". It premiered on November 11, 2010, at Abertoir Film Festival in Wales, UK to critical acclaim and was subsequently bought by Lionsgate to be released to DVD in March 2011. His short films are distributed by the Canadian Film Maker's Distribution Centre (CFMDC) and V tape, both in Toronto. Siren is distributed by Lionsgate. the neighbourhood where Hull lived and died from 2008 to 2010.

London-based Dutch contemporary artist, Magali Reus, in the final credit of her 2010 video work Finish, dedicated the piece to Andrew Mackenzie Hull. The short work was premiered at Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam in July 2010 as part of a solo exhibition of sculpture and video titled Weekend and featured five athletes/actors racing against the backdrop of an ocean beach. Reus had previously featured Hull in her video Conflicting Shadows (2009) as the main actor playing an ambiguous street patroller at night.

In November 2010, Andrew Hull's life partner, artist Shaan Syed, began The Andrew Project, a street-poster campaign featuring one thousand identical line drawings of Andrew's portrait posted throughout Toronto, the city in which the couple first met in 2001.

Filmography