Baba Hillman, a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, grew up in Japan, Venezuela, and Panama, and works between France and the U.S. Her films and performance works question belief systems, memory, perception, and the poetics and politics of place, language, and the body. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego. She is professor emerita of film at Hampshire College.
Her most recent film, Kitâb al-Isfâr: The Book of the Journey, draws upon the writings of Sufi poet and philosopher Ibn ‘Arabi in an exploration of near-death and mystical experience in Andalucía. Her films have screened internationally at festivals and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, FIDMarseille, Edinburgh Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Ann Arbor Film Festival, National Gallery of Art, Anthology Film Archives, ICAIC Havana, Athens Avant Garde Film Festival, and MIX Brazil, among others.
Hillman has received awards from the French Ministry of Culture, the Fulbright Commission, Whiting Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Italian city governments of Florence, Lecce, and Certaldo.
At MacDowell, she finished editing her film Flamme dans l'eau, which is based on a poem by Franck André Jamme. She also began a collaboration with composer and Fellow Camilo Andrés Méndez.
