Philip Hoffmans O, Zoo ( The Making of a Fiction Film) (23 min. , 1986)

The success of O, Zoo (The Making of a Fiction Film), the film that brought Philip Hoffman to international attention, marked the shift in Canadian experimental film in the eighties away from structuralism toward a more personal cinema. Begun as a documentary on the making of Peter Greenaways A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), Hoffmans treatise on reality as a construct turns conventional documentary film practice on its head. Familiar codes give way to family memories that, in turn, merge with personal reflections until the whole notion of a collective truth collapses. The result, in which the facts are suspect and fiction seems to be the only thing we can count on, is a brilliant statement on the fictions spun throughout our lives. In O, Zoo Hoffman grapples with the Griersonian legacy of Canadian documentary cinema. Largely shot around the production of Peter Greenaways A Zed and Two Noughts, the film constructs a labyrinthean fiction out of documentary materials, and places the story of a death at it