Born in 1911 in Chicago, Hy Hirsch worked all his life as a camera operator and a photographer in advertising. In 1937, he turned to avant-garde cinema and collaborated on a few projects as a comic actor and a camera operator in San Francisco. A friend of Belson's and Smith's, he counselled the two artists during their first experiments, and was inspired by them to create films of his own. In about a twelve year span, Hirsch made a large number of films, in the United States first, then in The Netherlands and finally in Paris, where he died in 1960 of a heart attack.
His disorderly life and his lack of interest in his own works make his filmography very difficult to compile. Many films have been lost, and any conjecture about the actual form of his surviving works is impossible, as some of them have been mutilated. Treating each show as a happening, Hirsch edited and re-edited his films according to the need, favouring live-music over soundtracks and, at times, choosing multivision. In short, he acted as a choreographer of cinema, refusing to bring his films to completion. What is left shows a genial and uneasy jack-of-all-trades. Gifted with great visual and rhythmic sensitivity, vivacious taste and unrestrained vitality, Hirsch was probably too attracted by the novelty of the next experiment to complete the artistic themes he had just discovered.
