1995-1998
A hybrid of DeSade and Dali, House of Pain is a nightmare that takes place between sleep and death where the performers appear as mute hallucinations. House of Pain features a hallucinogenic blend of the domestic and perverse. Hoolboom’s unerring cinematography fascinates and fetishizes, never straying far from the surface of his subjects, converting them into dark objects of magic and transformation. They are also profound testaments of the body at its limits, filled with a harrowing dream vision whose fantastical vantages lend the body a rare grace.

“The Canadian avant-garde has found its Salo, and its name is House of Pain. Prolific, hugely talented Toronto/Vancouver/Toronto experimental filmmaker Mike Hoolboom’s new feature must be the most transgressive Canadian film ever made. Shot in black-and-white and printed in colour to achieve its luscious sepia-like tones, House of Pain‘s four parts simultaneously seems to celebrate and be revolted by that House of Pain in which we all reside: the body. Hypnotic, hallucinatory, entirely wordless, and completely beyond the pale… the film reads like a nightmarish, nocturnal-emission compendium of avant-garde, cinema-of-shock history.” Jim Sinclair, Pacific Cinematheque