Jerome Hiler

Jerome Hiler (born March 27, 1943) is an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and stained glass artist. Having started in New York during the New American Cinema movement, Hiler and his partner Nathaniel Dorsky moved in 1971 to San Francisco, where for many years his work was shown in the context of private salon screenings. He began to publicly screen his films in the late 1990s, releasing new films regularly since 2010. Hiler's work makes use of vivid colors, musical rhythms or structures, and layered superimpositions edited in camera.

Early life Hiler was born on March 27, 1943, in Jamaica, Queens. He grew up in a religious Catholic family. He enjoyed classical music, particularly Igor Stravinsky. In high school, Hiler enrolled in a program at the Pratt Institute where he learned painting from Natalia Pohrebinska. He was inspired by the abstract expressionists of the time. He followed Jonas Mekas's column in The Village Voice and travelled into Manhattan to attend screenings at the Bleecker Street Cinema.

After graduating high school, Hiler moved into a storefront in the East Village and took a job as a runner on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. After his eviction from a shared artist’s loft on Eldridge Street, he moved into a Bowery hotel. He met filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos, who had cast a friend of Hiler's in The Illiac Passion, and moved into his Greenwich Village apartment. He was the first projectionist for Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls and projected the film countless times. He continued shooting film during this time, preferring reversal film for its speedier development process. This also gave him the ability to continually re-edit his footage in apartment screenings he held regularly. Hiler’s first attempt at a film was born from a 100 foot roll of Kodachrome. It was slightly edited and sent to Dorsky and called Fool's Spring. Dorsky reciprocated with his own 100 foot roll and the two were subsequently titled Two Personal Gifts. The two were projectionists and programmers at the local branch of the Sussex County Area Reference Library, which commissioned them to make an industrial film. The resulting work Library features a minimalist soundtrack by Tony Conrad and narration by Beverly Grant.

1971–present: San Francisco Hiler moved with Dorsky to San Francisco in 1971, where they became involved with Canyon Cinema and San Francisco Cinematheque. In 1990, he shot Acid Rock, a short 9-minute film recorded on Kodak Ektachrome reversal stock. Named after a large rock with the word "acid" on it which appears in the opening, the film exists only as its original print and did not receive distribution.

Filmography Fool's Spring (Two Personal Gifts) (co-made with Nathaniel Dorsky) (1966) Library (co-made with Nathaniel Dorsky) (1970) Gladly Given (1997) Target Rock (2000) Bagatelle II (1964–2016) Bagatelle I (2016–2018) Marginalia (2016) Ruling Star (2019) Careless Passage (2024)