Hopkins' first short film,
Field, made in 2001, premiered at
Cannes Film Festival as part of
International Critics' Week. A dark, unblinking tale of rural adolescence,
Field went on to win a host of prizes at festivals internationally. Hopkins followed
Field in 2003 with his second short film
Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, made as part of
Film 4 and
UK Film Council's
Cinema Extreme scheme for new British filmmaking talent.
Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, 'a study in the articulations and limitations of first love', premiered at
Edinburgh International Film Festival where it won Best British Short Film. Like
Field it was highly successful; together the two films gathered over 30 international awards. Hopkins then wrote and directed his debut feature film
Better Things. Shot on location in the West Midlands of England,
Better Things premiered at
International Critics' Week in
Cannes 2008, where it was nominated for the Camera D'Or. A
multi-narrative tale of love, yearning and loss amongst the young and old of a small town in rural England,
Better Things was widely praised by critics as a film that was both radical and nuanced. It was often noted for its use of cinematic technique and narrative approach to connect themes such as romantic need, the roots of drug addiction, and
existential notions of
anxiety, purposefully against a contemporary, epic rural backdrop.
Variety stated: "Duane Hopkins follows his prize-winning shorts with visually distinctive first feature
Better Things. Beautifully shot with cast of eye-catching non-pros… gives a special twist to UK tradition of
social realism by juxtaposing the natural and the constructed."
The Guardian wrote that
Better Things "has a bold and brilliant insight at its heart" while
The Independent argued that "Hopkins is a director with an introspective subtlety uncommon in UK filmmaking", and in choosing '
Better Things as its Film of the Month,
Sight and Sound wrote "Hopkins' film depicts, or rather creates, a piece of British social landscape that we have never quite seen before".
Le Monde made
Better Things its film of the week, comparing Hopkins' work to "the abstract violence of
Alan Clarke, and the lyrical harshness of
Bill Douglas...Hopkins clearly has a lot in common with such directors: he uses a harsh metaphysical darkness and an acute sense of formal composition.". Hopkins has been described as being at the centre of an emergent 'British New Wave' alongside directors like
Steve McQueen, with
Better Things distinguished "by its technical and stylistic approaches to typical problems of British realism". His film work has been noted for its precise compositions and technical rigour, and for its poetic cinematic rendering of realist subject matter, characters and environments. Hopkins also works in the fields of photography and moving image art. His first solo gallery exhibition
Sunday, a collection of single and multi-channel moving image installations, opened at the
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in March 2009.
Sunday deals with contemporary British youth and the relationships between identity, psychology and environment. The format of the individual pieces within the Sunday collection is that of multiple images knitted together to form multi-screen scenes, each working in different ways with atmosphere and narrative. The impression formed is suggestive of a
social-realist fairy tale – the subtle interaction of
realist,
surreal and
romantic tropes. With
Sunday Hopkins was said to have "created an experience that is entirely separate from the conventions of sitting in a cinema. He generates a portrait of youth that has a matter of fact, harsh reality to it and a psychological intensity that is unnerving."
Sunday was also exhibited at galleries in Liverpool and Yokohama in 2009. Hopkins produces the work of other filmmakers through Third, a company co-founded with producer Samm Haillay. With Third Hopkins has produced Daniel Elliott's Venice-winning short film
The Making of Parts and Berlinale-winning
Jade. In 2010 he co-produced the feature film debut of the artist
Gillian Wearing, titled
Self Made. ==Filmography==