Biography

Born in New York City, NY on July 9, 1939, Neil Hollander is a unique phenomenon in American art and cinematography due to the impact that has had on the making of feature and short films. After completing his studies at the New York University of Arts, Hollander developed an artistic sensibility to the rational counterpoint social criticism and modernist doubt in the power of reason. In fact, on the threshold of the eighties, when Hollander matures in his artistic expressions, the so-called artists of the New Wave are more or less starting to get familiar with the life and work of this protagonist. As a member of the golden era, Neil founded Hollander film in 1989 and offered a unique opportunity to other filmmakers to learn and get to know all the trends in the world of film. With his first film The Last Sailors: The Final Days of Working Sail (1984), Hollander announces that he is equally interested in both socio-political framework and the complex relationships of conscious and subconscious desires that make up the human experience of the same. However, only the following film will find the artistic expression of those interests. Riding the Rails (1988) is certainly one of the most important films in the history of West American cinematography, and also one of the first fully artistic narrative films in global terms. The meditation and isolation in a bureaucratic system completely renounces the descriptive-narrative form and uses contemporary artistic expression in an attempt to describe an abstract feeling. Although Hollander is not a draftsman, his films reveal him as an author who knows how to choose his associates, because after Riding the Rails follow extremely conscious art films, respectively part of the classics of American cinematography. Le dossier Babylone (1990), gives us a simple idea of the future in which people self-destroyed themselves. The film is displayed in a reverse chronological aesthetically rich frame. Probably the most famous project of Hollander, Jim Thompson: The Man & the Legend (2007) is his attempt to return the gag form, but with directing, music and art that is so playful, like the story of the amateur inspector who follows its own trail to the least memorable element. One of the most striking projects of alienation in the modern metropolis middle of the last century has been made with films like H for Hunger (2009), then the Burma saga Under the Radar: Burma (2010) which has the most expressive examples of the modernist approach to the oeuvre of the RISD School. It should also be noted projects like Burma: A Human Tragedy (2011), an experimental "picture book" based on motives of the political crisis in Myanmar and is among the most versatile work Hollander has created so far. Since the mid-nineties, Neil Hollander has devoted himself to producing and directing feature films. He remains to write books and has so far published several books like: The Great Zoo Break, Elusive Dove, The Yachtsman's Emergency Handbook: The Complete Survival Manual and Cook is the Captain among others.