Storm de Hirsch

• Name — Storm de Hirsch • Birth Name — Lillian Malkin • Born — December 9, 1912 • Birthplace — New Jersey, U.S. • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — poet, filmmaker • Notable Works — Goodbye in the Mirror (1964) Divinations (1964) Peyote Queen (1965) The Tattooed Man (1969)

Born Lillian Malkin in New Jersey in 1912, Storm de Hirsch left home at an early age to pursue a career in the arts in New York City. There she married her first husband, an artist named de Hirsch. She later married Louis Brigante, a filmmaker and one of the early editors of Film Culture magazine. The marriage lasted until Brigante's death in 1975. Like many experimental filmmakers at the time, de Hirsch did not begin her artistic career as a filmmaker; she was a poet who had published at least two collections by 1965. She turned to filmmaking because she wanted to find a new mode of expression for her thoughts that went beyond words on the page. In 1962 she made her first film and soon became active in the New York underground film movement, associating with filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke and others. In an interview with Jonas Mekas she mentioned Jack Smith, Ingmar Bergman, Gregory Markopoulos, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Seta, Ken Jacobs, Federico Fellini and Jonas and Adolphus Mekas as her favorite filmmakers. In addition to making films, de Hirsch taught at Bard College and New York's School of Visual Arts. After her husband's death she was forced to give up her studio, and stopped making films. She died in a Manhattan nursing home in 2000, following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Much of de Hirsch's work is abstract and employs experimental techniques such as frame-by-frame etching and painting and metadiagetic editing. In an interview with Jonas Mekas on the making of Divinations she said, • "I wanted badly to make an animated short and had no camera available. I did have some old, unused film stock and several rolls of 16mm sound tape. So I used that — plus a variety of discarded surgical instruments and the sharp edge of a screwdriver — by cutting, etching, and painting directly on both film and [sound] tape." Sometimes her animations are superimposed over live-action footage. Her films are clearly influenced by her poetic background; she referred to her series of short, silent films shot in the 1970s as "Cine-Sonnets," and she continued publishing poetry throughout her life. Her films also reveal an interest in eastern religious practices and rituals. Her work explores the possibilities of light and is concerned with spatial elements. In one film, Third Eye Butterfly, she used a two-screen projection with split-screen frames to create a kaleidoscopic effect. Not all of de Hirsch's films are cheaply made animated shorts. One of her early films, Goodbye in the Mirror (1964), is a feature-length live-action film shot on location in Rome, with her husband, Louis Brigante, serving as assistant director. Part scripted, part improvised, the film centers on three young women living in Rome, searching for meaning in their lives. The film was shot on 16mm and later blown up to 35mm, at a cost of around $20,000. Her films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cannes Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and elsewhere. They are available through the Canyon Cinema Cooperative and the Film-Makers' Cooperative.

• Silently, Bearing Totem of a Bird (1962) 6:45 minutes, S8mm • A Reticule of Love (1963) minutes, B/W, S8mm • Journey Around a Zero (1963) 3 minutes, 16mm • Goodbye in the Mirror (1964) 80 minutes, B/W, 16mm or 35mm • The Color of Ritual, the Color of Thought (trilogy) (1964-1966) • Divinations (1964) 5 1/2 minutes, 16mm • Peyote Queen (1965) 9 minutes, 16mm • Shaman (1966) 12 minutes, 16mm • Newsreel: Jonas in the Brig (1964) 5 minutes, B/W, silent, 16mm • The Recurring Dream (1965) 4 minutes, S8mm • Ives House-Woodstock (1965) 11 minutes, S8mm • Malevich at the Guggenheim (1965) 5:45 minutes, S8mm • Charlotte Moorman’s Avant-Garde Festival #9 (1965) 10 minutes, S8mm • Deep in the Mirror Imbedded (1965) 14 minutes, S8mm • Aristotle (1965) minutes, S8mm • Sing Lotus (1966) 14 minutes, 16mm • Cayuga Run. Hudson River Diary: Book I (1967) 18 minutes, 16mm • Third Eye Butterfly (1968) 10 minutes, 16mm • Trap Dance (1968) minutes, B/W, 16mm • The Tattooed Man (1969) 35 minutes, 16mm • Hudson River Diary at Gradiew (1970) • An Experiment in Meditation (1971) minutes, B/W, silent, 16mm • Guger's Landing (1971) • September Express (1973) 6 minutes, 16mm or S8mm • Wintergarden. Hudson River Diary Book: III (1973) 5 minutes, 16mm • River-Ghost. Hudson River Diary Book: IV (1973) 9 minutes, 16mm • Lace of Summer (1973) 4 minutes, 16mm or S8mm • Geometrics of the Kabbalah (1975) 11:15 minutes, 16mm Undated: • And Send My Love to the Wind • Cruger's Landing • Heathrow • Hello Tree • Swan's Way She also appears in Piero Heliczer's Dirt (1965), Gregory Markopoulos's Galaxie (1966), and Jonas Mekas's Birth of a Nation (1997), and composed music for the soundtrack of Mekas's Film Magazine of the Arts (1963).

Often described as a feminist, de Hirsch believed that when it came to the creative process there was no distinction between men and women. In 1967, Film Culture published "A Conversation: Shirley Clarke and Storm de Hirsch," in which the two women discussed gender and art. • "I think it's questionable as to whether the biological structure makes that much difference in terms of art. I have my own little theories about this, and I feel that when it comes to art, there's a question of soul, of the inner world, that's a universal thing; and I feel that the soul is neither male nor female." • —Storm de Hirsch, "A Conversation" In the same conversation, she noted that she often received written responses to manuscripts addressed to "Mr. Storm," and she suspected that her work was better received when magazine editors thought she was male.