Norm Hill

Norm Hill was born in San Jose, California. His great uncle went to college with a certain famous director/producer, and so Norm grew up visiting the sets of George Lucas's American Graffiti, Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon, and other productions shot in Northern California. Norm attended a private Lutheran college, Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington State, where he studied film production and film history. He moved over to the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where he finished his degree in Film Production and Film Theory/History. He wrote and directed two short films, Roman's Box (1988) and Smorts(1989). After graduating, Norm got involved as a programmer with the local Olympia Film Society, and its annual Olympia Film Festival. He helped bring to Olympia such talent as directors Gus Van Sant, Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, Bill Lustig, Ulli Lommel, performers Lydia Lunch, Excene Cervenka, film historian William K. Everson, and others. In 1994, Norman spent a year crusading to bring director Alejandro Jodorowsky from Europe and premiere the first screening in over 25 years in the US of his films, El Topo and Holy Mountain. Both premiered along with Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre at the Olympia Film Festival in 1994 with director/writer/actor Alejandro Jodorowsky in attendance. In 1995, Norman went to work for Seattle's famed Scarecrow Video as an event programmer, and joined forces with The Seattle International Film Festival to bring directors Todd Haynes and Peter Greenaway to Seattle, as well as creating a long standing relationship with film curator Greg Olson at The Seattle Art Museum. Together, the two have brought such talent to Seattle as John Woo, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Nicholas Roeg, Monte Hellman, John Kricfalusi, Thelma Schoommaker, Pat Hitchcock, and others. In July 1997, Norm programmed and directed The Masters of Animation Festival at the Seattle Art Museum, a three day festival of animation, featuring 25 animators from around the world, including Rene Laloux (Fantastic Planet), Mamorou Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Ray Harryhausen, Henry Selick (Nightmare before Christmas) Igor Kovalyov (Rugrats), and David Silverman (The Simpsons). In 1995, Norm was invited, along with filmmaker William Lustig, to join forces at the then new DVD company, Anchor Bay Entertainment. From 1995-2001, Norm worked alongside Bill Lustig, under co-president Jay Douglas, licensing films, and overseeing all aspects of post production over most of the Anchor Bay library, including the restoration for German director Werner Herzog's collection of films, where he sat in with Herzog as an interviewer on the commentary tracks. In addition, he oversaw the production on multiple library titles, from studios such as Universal Studios, New World, Disney, and Miramax. In 2001, Norm oversaw the creation of The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide, a collection of over 4000 reviews from multiple authors, published by Sasquatch Books. In 2001, Norm mentored with screenwriter Stewart Stern, author of Rebel without a Cause, and The Ugly American. From that collaboration resulted the script, "Ringo" , an apocalyptic spaghetti western. In 2004, Norm started a DVD company, Subversive Cinema, releasing over 20 feature films on DVD, including the DVD library of director David Lynch, and Werner Herzog's Wild Blue Yonder, handling both the US theatrical and DVD release. In 2006, Norm was commissioned to help distribute theatrically David Lynch's latest feature film, Inland Empire (2007) in the US. In 2007, Norm was hired by David Lynch's company Absurda to distribute for Lynch his features theatrically, and co-manage the sales of the Lynch library worldwide.