Philip Stewart Solomon was an American experimental filmmaker noted for his work with both film and video. Recently, Solomon has earned acclaim for a series of films that incorporate machinima made using games from the Grand Theft Auto series. His films are often described as haunting and lyrical. Solomon was an associate of the influential American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with whom he taught film at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Solomon and Brakhage collaborated on three films. In a 1992 poll for the British film magazineSight & Sound, Brakhage picked Solomon's Remains to Be Seen as one of the ten greatest films of all time. The film had previously been selected as one of the top ten films of 1989 by the Village Voice. Solomon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Award from the University of Oklahoma. In 2012 Solomon received the Knight Fellowship of the USA Fellows program, alongside such luminaries as novelist Annie Proulx, sculptor Alison Saar, jazz musician Jack DeJohnette, dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown, and artist Theaster Gates. On April 10, 2010, Solomon's American Falls opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The six-projection video/sound installation received great acclaim before closing in July 2010. In conjunction with the Corcoran exhibition, Solomon's career as a filmmaker was explored in "Rhapsodies in Silver," a three-program survey at Washington's National Gallery of Art. A re-edited, feature-length, single-projection version of American Falls was featured at the New York Film Festival's "Views from the Avant Garde" on October 1, 2010. The single projection version of the film condenses the original multi-projector format into a triptych, placing three independent images next to one another. In Fall 2012, Solomon screened a three-channel version of American Falls at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, as part of the exhibition "Film After Film." In the May/June 2010 Film Comment poll, The Top 50 Avant-Garde Filmmakers of the Decade, Phil Solomon placed at number 5, tied with his late colleague, Stan Brakhage.
Biography
Originally from New York City, Solomon attended Binghamton University and received an Masters of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art. One of Solomon's instructors was the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, who started his first class with a screening of Tony Conrad's film The Flicker. Solomon initially disliked the film, but the experience, followed by a screening of his future collaborator Stan Brakhage's Blue Moses, had a profound impact on his development as a filmmaker. Another formative experience came in the form of a lecture by critic Fred Camper on Brakhage's Anticipation of the Night. Solomon began making films in 1975. Solomon has since destroyed some of his early works, many of which were made in imitation of Brakhage. Solomon had been teaching at the University of Colorado since 1991. Solomon died on April 20, 2019 from complications following surgery at the age of 65.
Preservation
Solomon's films have been housed at the Academy Film Archive since 2005, and they have preserved several of his films, including "As If We," "Twilight Psalm I: The Lateness of the Hour," and "What's Out Tonight Is Lost."
