Working in the tradition of 16mm experimental cinema for the past 25 years, Timoleon Wilkins draws unashamedly from the lyrical and diaristic tendencies of the predecessors who have also been his teachers (whether literally or figuratively) – particularly Brakhage, Baillie and Dorsky – and remains fiercely loyal to the materials of “amateur” filmmaking: the Bolex, reversal film, silent or non-sync sound. Finding beauty in unexpected places, his work masterfully blends the sublime and the everyday, wherein subtle observation and somber understatement exist side by side with explosions of intense color and emotion, tracing an itinerary from clear-eyed perception to melancholy to a kind of exaltation. Wilkins finds special inspiration in the landscape of the West, on either side of the US/Mexico border, and his work occasionally reveals a debt to the road movie. Above all, these films signal an artist surveying the history and the potential of personal cinema at a time when that tradition faces the challenge of the digital. The HFA is pleased to welcome Timoleon Wilkins with a retrospective of his exquisite films.                                                                                                                          — David Pendleton