Phillip Barker (film director)

Phillip Barker was born in Bradford, Yorkshire,^{[citation needed]} England.^[4] His father was an auto mechanic and his mother a nurse.^[5]

Barker's interest in filmmaking began in 1967, when his father brought home a Super-8 camera and projector.^[6] Barker's family moved to Canada the following year.^[4] His father had purchased the film camera to document the trip.^[7] He completed his high school education at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough, Ontario, where his brother Mike was a founder of the city's Folk Under the Clock concert series.^[8]

He attended the Ontario College of Art, starting with commercial illustration, later transitioning to more experimental forms of art, including installation art that incorporated elements of film and video.^[4]

Barker spent a year and a half in Paris, before moving to Amsterdam, where he lived from 1982 to 1987, supporting himself by working as a scenic painter.^[4][9] In 1986, he debuted his performance piece titled Trust a Boat, 'Film-sculpture for a House' inside a canal house on the Keizersgracht.^[1] The performance was viewed from the street below as scenes were performed in nine windows of the three story building.^[1][10] These scenes consisted of a mixture of live performance and film projections set to music.^[1] Barker also served as production designer for the 1987 Dutch film Zoeken naar Eileen (Looking for Eileen), by director Rudolf van den Berg.^[11][12]

Upon his return to Canada, Barker continued to create installation pieces that incorporated elements of film, video, sculpture and live performance, often exhibited in public places.^[4][9] He also worked on commercials and rock videos to help support himself.^[4][9]

At the Seville Expo '92, Barker contributed an art piece to the Canadian pavilion.^[13] His work consisted of a flooded tent set up in the middle of a vast pond. Images of Canadian ecological disasters were projected onto the walls of the tent.^[13]

In 1995, Barker released the short film A Temporary Arrangement. The film won the Best Experimental Film Award at the 1996 Melbourne International Film Festival,^[14] and was also featured on TVOntario's two-part series Exposures: The Art of Film and Video, which aired in 2005.^[15] The film features composite images that were made by combining nine frames, all shot in Super 8 film and arranged into a grid that was then transferred to 35mm film.^[16]

Barker worked on Egoyan's stage production of Richard Strauss's opera Salome, presented by the Canadian Opera Company in 1996.^[17] Barker created elements of projected film and video for the performance.^[18][19] The first of many collaborations with Egoyan, the two met after Egoyan attended one of Barker's shows that was being held in an abandoned building once owned by the CBC.^[20] The work involved a delicate paper house that was suspended over a shallow pool of water and projected on the walls were black-and-white super 8 film images of various people floating on a river.^[21] Egoyan said of the experience: "Sometimes it just happens. You see a piece by a new artist and it answers something within you in a direct and powerful way. I had that experience nearly twenty-five years ago when I first came across Phillip's work."^[21] After the show, Egoyan left Barker a note in the show's guestbook, inviting Barker to work with him.^[20]

Barker and Egoyan next worked together on the film The Sweet Hereafter.^[22] Barker was nominated, along with Patricia Cuccia, in the category of Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design at the 18th Genie Awards for their work on the film.^[23] He also worked with Egoyan in 1997 on a film featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma that aired as the fourth episode of the six-part television film series Inspired by Bach.^[22]

In 1998 Barker worked with director Mira Nair on the TV film rendition of the novel My Own Country,^[24] as well as with Egoyan on his production of the chamber opera Elsewhereless by Canadian composer Rodney Sharman.^[22] Barker also released his short film I am always connected, which used repurposed footage from an installation piece that he made for the Lumen Travo gallery in Amsterdam in 1984.^[25]

The following year he released his film Soul Cages, which features a grid of forty-five Super 8 film frames arranged into one frame of 35mm film—an expansion of the technique that he employed in A Temporary Arrangement.^[16] Soul Cages won best short film at The Atlantic Film Festival,^[3] Best Dramatic Short from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers^[26] and, with producer Simone Urdl, Barker shared a nomination for Best Live Action Short Film at the 21st Genie Awards.^[27]

The 2000s saw further collaborations between Barker and Egoyan. Barker was the production designer for the films Ararat (2002),^[28] Where the Truth Lies (2005),^[29] Adoration (2008)^[30] and Chloe (2009).^[31] Barker received Genie award nominations for his work on Ararat^[28] and Where the Truth Lies.^[29] In 2006 he was presented with a Directors Guild of Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production Design for Where the Truth Lies.^[32] His work on the sets for the film were featured in an issue of Canadian Interiors magazine that same year.^[33] Barker built a 3,000-square-foot presidential suite at London's Shepperton Studios, inspired by the architecture and design of Morris Lapidus during his MiMo period, for the film.^[33]

The Toronto International Film Festival included Barker's short film, Malody, in their list of Canada's Top Ten Short Films of 2012.^[34] In 2013 Malody received the Prix Créativité (creativity prize) at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal,^[35] in addition to the Le prix Hors Pistes (the "off-track" or "off-road" prize) at the Festival Hors Pistes held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.^[36]

Barker served as production designer for the television series Reign from 2013 to 2015,^{[37][citation needed]} as well as on the 2016 CBS series American Gothic.^[38] He was nominated, along with Robert Hepburn and Brad Milburn, for Best Production Design or Art Direction in a Fiction Program or Series for his work on Reign at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards.^[37]

In 2017 Barker released his short film Shadow Nettes.^[39] In the film, a fisherman teaches his son about the use of the "shadow nette", a traditional fishing device worn by the fisherman that projects their silhouette on to a screen.^[39] Using their projected gestures, the fisherman draws prey to their nets.^[39] Shadow Nettes was featured at several film festivals internationally in 2017 and 2018 and won the prize for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival.^[39][40] It was also featured on the CBC series 'Canadian Reflections.^[39]

Barker again collaborated with Egoyan on the film Guest of Honour, which was released in 2019. His work on the film earned him a nomination for Achievement in Art Direction / Production Design at the 2021 Canadian Screen Awards.^[41]

Also in 2019, Barker and fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, launched a tour featuring a retrospective of Barker's films, titled Strange Machines: The Films of Phillip Barker.^[42] The tour also featured the release of a book by the same title that was edited by Hoolbloom.^[42] The retrospective was presented at the TIFF Bell Lightbox,^[43] the Canadian Film Institute,^[42] as well as the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France.^[44]

Barker also sat on a panel of production designers at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, alongside François Audouy (The Wolverine, Logan, Ford v Ferrari), Craig Lathrop (The Lighthouse, The Witch), and Zosia Mackenzie (Castle in the Ground.)^[45]

In 2020, Barker served as production designer in the third season of Star Trek: Discovery.^[46] He was suggested to the show's executive producer, Alex Kurtzman, who had seen some of Barker's experimental films.^[46] He was also nominated for a Directors Guild of Canada award for Best Production Design – Dramatic Series, for his work on the show.^[47]