Baba Hillman grew up in Japan, Venezuela and Panama and works between France and the U.S.. Her films and performance works explore memory, history, perception and the poetics and politics of place, language, and the body.
She studied with Etienne Decroux, was co-director of Teatro Movimento in Florence, and is Professor Emerita of Film at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her films have screened widely at festivals and museums including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, FIDMarseille, Edinburgh Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Ann Arbor Film Festival, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Anthology Film Archives, ICAIC Havana, Africa World Documentary Festival, Yaounde, MIX Brazil, and European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, among others. She has received awards and grants from the French Ministry of Culture, the Whiting Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Italian city governments of Florence, Lecce and Certaldo.
In 2020, Hillman’s film Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey, a feature-length film about near-death and mystical experiences in Andalucia, premiered at the FIDMarseille film festival and was selected for the Athens Avant Garde Film Festival and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. Earlier films by Hillman include Decroux’s Garden, and 5 Cité de la Roquette, part of a series of films connected to return, place and disappearance.
