Revisiting still photographs from his family album, Phillip Hoffman’s black-and-white short reconsiders the format of bildungsroman. At one point, the artist's ambiguous revisitation—and seamlessly oneiric recreation—of an athletic Northern boyhood frames a stunning slow-motion sequence restaging his youth, playing hockey on a frozen pond, while his family dog, an eager German Shepherd, inches close by, pawing the icy pond and following his every move. At once suspenseful and melancholic in its gradual pacing, On the Pond inertly meditates on the interstices of memory, recollection, adolescence and solitude.

Aaditya Aggarwal
Programs & Collections Coordinator, CFMDC