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Henry Hills has made 22 short experimental films since 1975.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library (Donnell Media Center and Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library) , the Archives du Film Experimental d'Avignon, the Arsenal in Berlin, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Rocky Mountain Film Center, SUNY Buffalo, Bard College, Wayne State University, and the Miami-Dade Public Library.

He received an M.F.A. in filmmaking in 1978 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied with James Broughton, George Kuchar, and Hollis Frampton. His early San Francisco films (Porter Springs 1-3 and the North Beach series) are ornate, intensely rhythmic single-frame silent landscape studies. His first sound film, Kino Da!, a portrait of San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman reading in Russian and English cut-up into "zaums" and metrically reassembled à la Klebnikov, is frequently screened in filmmaking classes.

Upon moving to New York in 1978 he began an association with the "Language" poets and with the first generation Downtown improvised music scene. Money (1985) documents these movements of the early 80s with an all-star artist cast, while simultaneously developing parallel formal innovations. One of the densest sync-sound films ever made (2500 "scenes" in 15 min), Money, which remains entertaining today, was the culmination of a string of radically formal investigatory studies (Plagiarism and Radio Adios) into the possibilities of sound/image sync. Production of MONEY was supported by grants from the NEA and the New York State Council on the Arts. The film was accompanied by an equally experimental book, Making Money (Roof Books, NYC, 1986), published with assistance of a 1986 grant from NYSCA.

In the late 80s he began incorporating the results of his formal investigations into more widely accessible thematic works. SSS, his radiant 1988 dance film, converts the rubble of a decayed Lower East Side into a joyous playground. Bali Mécanique presents the rhythms and rituals of that Paradise island through a recreation of a Legong performance. Little Lieutenant recreates the optimism and ambiguities of the Weimar era through innovative usage of rear screen projections. Heretic, a pseudo-trailer composed from outtakes from a low-budget feature (The Genius by Joe Gibbons and Emily Breer) starring Karen Finley, cleverly explodes a number of narrative tropes while satirizing the psychotherapeutic experience. Mechanics of the Brain, a "remake" of Pudovkin's first film (a documentary on Pavlov's experiments), is a dance film in the guise of a science documentary; the original Zorn soundtrack is available on Filmworks VI (Tzadek). With Porter Springs 4 (a family portrait composed from footage shot and sounds recorded over 30 years) and A New Life (a video resolving a project abandoned 10 years ago) his work took a more personal, emotional turn.

He is currently releasing sections from his DV exploration Emma's Dilemma. In progress since 1997. Nervous Ken is a portrait of filmmaker Ken Jacobs and King Richard a portrait of playwright Richard Foreman.

Hills has frequently collaborated with composer John Zorn and choreographer Sally Silvers. He directed several music videos for Zorn's all-star band Naked City (who also supplied original music for Heretic). Silvers, after appearing in a number of Hills' films, choreographed and co-directed Little Lieutenant (partially produced with 1992 Dance Film funding from the NEA), a festival favorite and winner of numerous awards,which was storyboarded and cut to a Zorn arrangement of a Kurt Weill song. Mechanics of the Brain (partially funded the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts) is their second collaboration.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Hills received his B.A. in English from Washington & Lee University. He was a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam war. From 1977-80, Hills edited Cinemanews, a West Coast film journal. Throughout his career he has been active as a curator, organizing programs at Anthology Film Archives, Millennium, Collective for Living Cinema, Roulette, Segue and various clubs and galleries. He served on the board of the Film-Makers' Cooperative from 1985-88, was Executive Director of The Segue Foundation--a non-profit literary arts organization--from 1984-1993, directed and edited a 1990 compilation documentary--Elektra 40 Years--celebrating the record label's anniversary, was President of Hip's Road--a non-profit new music foundation--from 1992-93, and has worked extensively on the Avid Media Composer--as one of the editors of Looking For Richard by Al Pacino (winner of the 1995 A.C.E. Award for Best Editing of a Documentary), on numerous music videos (including Patti Smith, Moby, and Kronos Quartet), as chief editor for the Burly Bear Network--the college cable division of Broadway Video, as editor on the Howard Stern Radio Show on CBS (98-99 season), & as editor of the Austrian documentary feature In the Mirror of Maya Deren and the Guatemalan narrative feature What Sebastian Dreamt. He has been a member of the faculty in film at the Pratt Institute and the San Francisco Art Institute and has been Professor at the film academy FAMU in Prague since 2005.