Phillip Barker (film director)

Phillip Barker was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England.[4] His father was an auto mechanic.[5]

Barker's interest in filmmaking began in 1967, when his father brought home a Super-8 camera and projector.[6] Barker's family moved to Canada the following year.[4] His father had purchased the film camera to document the trip.[7] He completed his high school education at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough, Ontario, where his brother Mike was a founder of the city's Folk Under the Clock concert series.[8]

He attended the Ontario College of Art, starting with commercial illustration, later transitioning to more experimental forms of art, including installation art that incorporated elements of film and video.[4]

Barker spent a year and a half in Paris, before moving to Amsterdam, where he lived from 1982 to 1987, supporting himself by working as a scenic painter.[4][9] In 1986, he debuted his performance piece titled Trust a Boat, 'Film-sculpture for a House' inside a canal house on the Keizersgracht.[1] The performance was viewed from the street below as scenes were performed in nine windows of the three story building.[1][10] These scenes consisted of a mixture of live performance and film projections set to music.[1] Barker also served as production designer for the 1987 Dutch film Zoeken naar Eileen (Looking for Eileen), by director Rudolf van den Berg.[11][12]

Upon his return to Canada, Barker continued to create installation pieces that incorporated elements of film, video, sculpture and live performance, often exhibited in public places.[4][9] He also worked on commercials and rock videos to help support himself.[4][9]

At the Seville Expo '92, Barker contributed an art piece to the Canadian pavilion.[13] His work consisted of a flooded tent set up in the middle of a vast pond. Images of Canadian ecological disasters were projected onto the walls of the tent.[13]

In 1995, Barker released the short film A Temporary Arrangement. The film won the Best Experimental Film Award at the 1996 Melbourne International Film Festival,[14] and was also featured on TVOntario's two-part series Exposures: The Art of Film and Video, which aired in 2005.[15] The film features composite images that were made by combining nine frames, all shot in Super 8 film and arranged into a grid that was then transferred to 35mm film.[16]

Barker worked on Egoyan's stage production of Richard Strauss's opera Salome, presented by the Canadian Opera Company in 1996.[17] Barker created elements of projected film and video for the performance.[18][19] The first of many collaborations with Egoyan, the two met after Egoyan attended one of Barker's shows that was being held in an abandoned building once owned by the CBC.[20] The work involved a delicate paper house that was suspended over a shallow pool of water and projected on the walls were black-and-white super 8 film images of various people floating on a river.[21] Egoyan said of the experience: "Sometimes it just happens. You see a piece by a new artist and it answers something within you in a direct and powerful way. I had that experience nearly twenty-five years ago when I first came across Phillip's work."[21] After the show, Egoyan left Barker a note in the show's guestbook, inviting Barker to work with him.[20]

Barker and Egoyan next worked together on the film The Sweet Hereafter.[22] Barker was nominated, along with Patricia Cuccia, in the category of Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design at the 18th Genie Awards for their work on the film.[23] He also worked with Egoyan in 1997 on a film featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma that aired as the fourth episode of the six-part television film series Inspired by Bach.[22]

In 1998 Barker worked with director Mira Nair on the TV film rendition of the novel My Own Country,[24] as well as with Egoyan on his production of the chamber opera Elsewhereless by Canadian composer Rodney Sharman.[22] Barker also released his short film I am always connected, which used repurposed footage from an installation piece that he made for the Lumen Travo gallery in Amsterdam in 1984.[25]

The following year he released his film Soul Cages, which features a grid of forty-five Super 8 film frames arranged into one frame of 35mm film—an expansion of the technique that he employed in A Temporary Arrangement.[16] Soul Cages won best short film at The Atlantic Film Festival,[3] Best Dramatic Short from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers[26] and, with producer Simone Urdl, Barker shared a nomination for Best Live Action Short Film at the 21st Genie Awards.[27]

The 2000s saw further collaborations between Barker and Egoyan. Barker was the production designer for the films Ararat (2002),[28] Where the Truth Lies (2005),[29] Adoration (2008)[30] and Chloe (2009).[31] Barker received Genie award nominations for his work on Ararat[28] and Where the Truth Lies.[29] In 2006 he was presented with a Directors Guild of Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production Design for Where the Truth Lies.[32] His work on the sets for the film were featured in an issue of Canadian Interiors magazine that same year.[33] Barker built a 3,000-square-foot presidential suite at London's Shepperton Studios, inspired by the architecture and design of Morris Lapidus during his MiMo period, for the film.[33]

The Toronto International Film Festival included Barker's short film, Malody, in their list of Canada's Top Ten Short Films of 2012.[34] In 2013 Malody received the Prix Créativité (creativity prize) at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal,[35] in addition to the Le prix Hors Pistes (the "off-track" or "off-road" prize) at the Festival Hors Pistes held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.[36]

Barker served as production designer for the television series Reign from 2013 to 2015,[37][38] as well as on the 2016 CBS series American Gothic.[39] He was nominated, along with Robert Hepburn and Brad Milburn, for Best Production Design or Art Direction in a Fiction Program or Series for his work on Reign at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards.[37]

In 2017 Barker released his short film Shadow Nettes.[40] In the film, a fisherman teaches his son about the use of the "shadow nette", a traditional fishing device worn by the fisherman that projects their silhouette on to a screen.[40] Using their projected gestures, the fisherman draws prey to their nets.[40] Shadow Nettes was featured at several film festivals internationally in 2017 and 2018 and won the prize for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival.[40][41] It was also featured on the CBC series 'Canadian Reflections.[40]

Barker again collaborated with Egoyan on the film Guest of Honour, which was released in 2019. His work on the film earned him a nomination for Achievement in Art Direction / Production Design at the 2021 Canadian Screen Awards.[42]

Also in 2019, Barker and fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, launched a tour featuring a retrospective of Barker's films, titled Strange Machines: The Films of Phillip Barker.[43] The tour also featured the release of a book by the same title that was edited by Hoolbloom.[43] The retrospective was presented at the TIFF Bell Lightbox,[44] the Canadian Film Institute,[43] as well as the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France.[45]

Barker also sat on a panel of production designers at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, alongside François Audouy (The Wolverine, Logan, Ford v Ferrari), Craig Lathrop (The Lighthouse, The Witch), and Zosia Mackenzie (Castle in the Ground.)[46]

In 2020, Barker served as production designer in the third season of Star Trek: Discovery.[47] He was suggested to the show's executive producer, Alex Kurtzman, who had seen some of Barker's experimental films.[47] He was also nominated for a Directors Guild of Canada award for Best Production Design – Dramatic Series, for his work on the show.[48]

• Hoolboom, Mike, ed. (2018). Strange Machines: The Films of Phillip Barker (PDF). Phillip Barker and Pleasure Dome. ISBN 978-1-9994252-0-3.

• Phillip Barker at IMDb