Andrew Hull
Encyclopedia
Andrew Hull was a Canadian born film maker, film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

. Born Andrew Mackenzie Hull, August 15, 1963, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
Oshawa, Ontario
Oshawa is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It lies in Southern Ontario approximately 60 kilometres east of downtown Toronto. It is commonly viewed as the eastern anchor of both the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe. It is now commonly referred to as the most...

 and died May 8, 2010 in London.

Early life

Andrew Hull was the youngest of three children born to Ralph Hull, psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

, and Margot Finley, artist. He spent his childhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

 and Peterborough, Ontario
Peterborough, Ontario
Peterborough is a city on the Otonabee River in southern Ontario, Canada, 125 kilometres northeast of Toronto. The population of the City of Peterborough was 74,898 as of the 2006 census, while the census metropolitan area has a population of 121,428 as of a 2009 estimate. It presently ranks...

, attended Lakefield College School
Lakefield College School
Lakefield College School is a coeducational boarding school located north of the village of Lakefield, Ontario, Canada.The school's motto is Mens Sana In Corpore Sano...

 as a boy, and studied architecture at Carleton University
Carleton University
Carleton University is a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The enabling legislation is The Carleton University Act, 1952, S.O. 1952. Founded as a small college in 1942, Carleton now offers over 65 programs in a diverse range of disciplines. Carleton has...

, Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

. During his studies in 1989 he won the AIA/ACSA Research Council-Otis Elevator International Student Competition for his mixed-use commercial, retail and residential design for a development in historic London. Despite this accolade his interests shifted to film and video. Being one of the first students to work with video at the School of Architecture, he graduated with an experimental video work about a cryptic symbol of a traced hand that appears in the urban environment. This first completed video marked his move from architecture into narrative film.

Film career

While working as an architect in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1991, Andrew Hull was invited to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 by Carleton University
Carleton University
Carleton University is a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The enabling legislation is The Carleton University Act, 1952, S.O. 1952. Founded as a small college in 1942, Carleton now offers over 65 programs in a diverse range of disciplines. Carleton has...

 colleagues Stephen Kovats and Ian Johnston to work on video and animation projects and to mentor students of the Bauhaus Dessau's international and multi-disciplinary 'Experimental Studio Dessau North'. In 1992 he was co-commissioned by the 'Werkstatt Industrielles Gartenreich' of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is a Foundation under public law. It is a centre of research, teaching and experimental design. The Foundation in its current form was founded by the German Federal Government, the state of Saxony-Anhalt and the town Dessau in 1994. It is based in the historical...

 to make a documentary video about the 'Kulturpalast Bitterfeld', a Socialist Utopian model project of the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

, built in 1954. His collaborator in this video project was Stephen Kovats, media researcher, architect and artistic director of Transmediale
Transmediale
transmediale is an annual festival for media art and digital culture taking place for one week in February in Berlin, Germany. The festival engages in reflective, aesthetic and speculative positions in between art, technology and culture...

. The film was entitled “Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain”. As a result of this collaboration, Hull moved to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, living first in Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...

, later in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. 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
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 and comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

, 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
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

. In Dessau he made “Earworm”, a forty-three minute film funded by both German and Canadian Arts Councils
Canada Council
The Canada Council for the Arts, commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown Corporation established in 1957 to act as an arts council of the government of Canada, created to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. It funds Canadian artists and...

 that told the story of a group of anarchist Karaoke
Karaoke
is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...

 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
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 and biting satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 on the paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...

 of communist era East Germany, intertwined with the politics around HIV/AIDS, and the growing gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 underground club and rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...

 scene in Germany in the late eighties and early nineties. Hull also presented the video installation
Video installation
Video installation is a contemporary art form that combines video technology with installation art, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. Tracing its origins to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as digital video production...

 “Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929. The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that...

” at the Ostranenie International Video Festival at the Bauhaus Dessau.

In 1996 Andrew Hull returned to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and lived in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 until 2008. While working as an Art Director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....

 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
Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
The Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is a movie screening event that takes place each October in Tampa, Florida. The primary venue is the Tampa Theatre, but several other cinemas in or near the downtown area and in St. Petersburg simultaneously host the event as well...

 in 2004) were made with assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
Ontario Arts Council
The Ontario Arts Council is a publicly-funded Canadian organization in the province of Ontario whose purpose is to promote and assist the development of the arts for the enjoyment and benefit of all Ontarians...

 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
Norman Jewison
Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, O.Ont is a Canadian film director, producer, actor and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Highlights of his directing career include In the Heat of the Night , The Thomas Crown Affair , Fiddler on the Roof , Jesus Christ Superstar , Moonstruck , The Hurricane and The...

 created Canadian Film Centre
Canadian Film Centre
The Canadian Film Centre is an advanced training institution for film, television and new media. Based in Toronto, Canada, CFC offers residents education, industry partnerships and production experience...

 (CFC), Canada's foremost school for advanced training in film, television and new media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...

. He graduated in 2004 with the short film “Squeezebox”, a tragicomedy
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...

 starring Canadian cult rock heroine, actress and singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O'Hara
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Mary Margaret O'Hara is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress, who has been hailed as one of the greatest cult heroines in rock music despite having released very few of her own recordings. She is best known for the critically acclaimed album Miss America, released in 1988.-Early stages: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
Canadian Film Centre
The Canadian Film Centre is an advanced training institution for film, television and new media. Based in Toronto, Canada, CFC offers residents education, industry partnerships and production experience...

, paid homage to film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 and was loosely based on Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...

' book “Time's Arrow
Time's Arrow (novel)
Time's Arrow: or The Nature of the Offence is a novel by Martin Amis. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize .- Plot summary :The novel recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in a disorienting reverse chronology...

”. 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 UK to be with his life partner
Life partner
A life partner is a romantic or otherwise very close friend for life. The partners can be of the same or opposite sexes, married or unmarried, and monogamous or polyamorous....

, contemporary artist and painter, Shaan Syed, and to begin production on his first feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

, “Siren”, co-written with Canadian-born, US-based screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 Geoffrey Gunn. "Siren", a horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 / thriller genre film is an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 on the Greek myth of the siren
Siren
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...

, 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
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

 during the summer of 2009. The film's soundtrack features and is based on the Los Angeles all-girl group Warpaint
Warpaint (band)
Warpaint is an American art rock group from Los Angeles, formed in 2004. The band's members are Emily Kokal , Theresa Wayman , Jenny Lee Lindberg , and Stella Mozgawa . The band's membership has also included actress Shannyn Sossamon and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer...

's song, "Elephants". It premiered on November 11, 2010 at Abertoir
Abertoir
Abertoir is an annual horror and horror film festival held in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Ceredigion, Wales in November. Currently in its sixth year, the festival began as a 3-day event and has grown since to its current 6-day schedule. Abertoir is currently Wales' only horror festival and is a...

 Film Festival in Wales, UK to critical acclaim and was subsequently bought by Lionsgate to be released to DVD in March 2011.

Death

Andrew Hull died at the Royal London Hospital
Royal London Hospital
The Royal London Hospital was founded in September 1740 and was originally named The London Infirmary. The name changed to The London Hospital in 1748 and then to The Royal London Hospital on its 250th anniversary in 1990. The first patients were treated at a house in Featherstone Street,...

 on May 8 2010 of a head injury as a result of a fall from his bicycle. Hull was at the time close to finishing a final edit on his newest short film “Breaking and Entering”, shot in Toronto in 2008. The film is a story of a young man coming to terms with the death of his father, and is based on the short story of the same name by Canadian author Andrew Pyper
Andrew Pyper
Andrew Pyper is a Canadian writer of fiction. Born in 1968, he received a BA and an MA in English Literature from McGill University, as well as a law degree from the University of Toronto. Although called to the bar in 1996, he has never practiced. He lives in Toronto.-Published works: A collection...

. The film was subsequently completed by the Estate of Andrew Hull.

Representation

Andrew Hull was a member of the Director's Guild of Canada. His short films are distributed by the Canadian Film Maker's Distribution Centre (CFMDC)  and V tape, both in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

. “Siren” is distributed by Lionsgate.

Posthumous Artist tributes and works

London-based choreographer and artistic director of Dance Art Foundation, Joe Moran dedicated his piece “Score for 30 Dancers” to Andrew Hull. It was presented on May 27, 2010 as part of “From Morning”, a day of dance and performance curated by London-based dancer and choreographer, Florence Peak. The piece was performed by thirty of the UK's most prominent dance artists and was made in response to an invitation to create a new site-specific work that spoke to the distinct architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton.-Life:Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a...

's Christ Church, Spitalfields in the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...

, 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
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 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

Year Title Role Other notes
1989 The City Rediscovered Writer/Director 21min, betacam
Betacam
Betacam is family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself....

1993 Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain Writer/Director 56min Hi8, collaboration with Stephen Kovats
1996 Earworm
Earworm
Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one's mind, put colloquially as "music being stuck in one's head."...

 
Writer/Director 43min, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

 Hi8/Super 8
Super 8
-Media and entertainment:* Super 8 mm film, a motion picture film format* Super 8 , a 2011 science fiction film* Super 8 , by Züri West* Super 8 * super8 * Super8, a DJ of the duo Super8 & Tab...

1996 Calypso ! Writer/Director 4:26min, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

1999 Dizzy Writer/Director 19min, 16mm
2003 That thing we do Writer/Director 16min, 35mm
2003 Wilden Jungen Co-Writer/Co-Director 5min, super 8
Super 8
-Media and entertainment:* Super 8 mm film, a motion picture film format* Super 8 , a 2011 science fiction film* Super 8 , by Züri West* Super 8 * super8 * Super8, a DJ of the duo Super8 & Tab...

, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

. Collaboration with Shaan Syed. An invitational by IMAGES, Toronto's GLTB Film Festival.
2005 Squeezebox
Squeezebox
The term Squeezebox is a colloquial expression referring to any musical instrument of the general class of hand-held bellows-driven free reed aerophones such as the accordion and the concertina...

 
Writer/Director 14min, 35mm
2006 Rewind Writer/Director 5min, HD
HD
HD may refer to:- Science and technology :* High-definition, reference to:** high-definition video** high-definition television ** Intel High Definition Audio** HD Voice...

2011 Siren
Siren
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...

 
Director/Co-Writer feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

, redcam. Co-written with Geoffrey Gunn, distributed by Lionsgate.
2011 Breaking and Entering Writer/Director 7min, redcam. Completed posthumously by the Estate of Andrew Hull.
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