Synopsis

I passed you by, I only passed you by, on the street, in the subway, or rather I saw you, I only saw you, on television, in the newspapers, I read the story of your life, I saw photos of you, I saw you passing by, only passing by, but I couldn’t forget your eyes, they said to me: “Little brother, little sister, you look like me.”

Pierre Hébert

Right from his first film in 1962, Histoire verte, Pierre Hébert has been experimenting with the animation technique of engraving images directly onto 16mm or 35mm processed black film. In the eighties, he has developed a new type of performance involving "live" animation scratched directly on a film loop while it is rolling in a projector, usually associated with improvised music and occasionally with dance. He is currently expanding this live animation practice with the use of computers. From 1993 to 1995, he was president of La Cinémathèque Québecoise, and has also been teaching animation and writing for cinema and art magazines. In August 2010, he was granted an honorary professorship by the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. In 2011, he became president of the board of the artist-run video center Videographe, in Montreal. His most recent films are The Statue of Giordano Bruno (co-dir: Bob Ostertag 2005), Herqueville (2007), Triptych (2009), Praha-Florenc (2009), Place Carnot-Lyon (2011).