Short films by BRUCE BAILLIE/Quick Billy (1967-70)

TO PARSIFAL (1963, 16 minutes, 16mm)
MASS FOR THE DAKOTA SIOUX (1964, 20 minutes, 16mm)
YELLOW HORSE (1965, 8 minutes, 16mm)
TUNG (1966, 6 minutes, 16mm)
CASTRO STREET (1966, 10 minutes, 16mm)
ALL MY LIFE (1966, 3 minutes, 16mm)
STILL LIFE (1966, 2 minutes, 16mm)
ROSLYN ROMANCE (IS IT REALLY TRUE?) (1978, 17 minutes, 16mm)
at Anthology Film Archives
/Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Bruce Baillie: Quick Billy (1967-70): Screening and Discussion


Sunairi: It started out with Apichatpong's series of presentation on his film, installation, "Primitive" and a screening of his inspiration, Bruce Baillie: "Quick Billy (1967-70)," in which Bruce himself came and talked and talked by approaching the central issue left and right as he explained to be his age, he is not good at talking at late night.


"Quick Billy" was structurally provocative as I can see as well as Apichatpong himself explained of its dual structure of two stories co-existing without necessarily relating to each other.


It was basically very Avant-Garde with layering of images, scenes so there is constant flow of moving from one subject to another obscuring and juxtaposing meaning on top of each other.  I see the beauty in terms of how Apichatpong took a clue to elaborate his structural duality in films like "Tropical Malady" or "Syndromes and a Century"


However, the shorts at Anthology were beautiful.  Since I saw films one after another, I couldn't twll which was which, but as far as I can remember, the nature, cinematography, B&Wness of "TO PARSIFAL" was amazing starter. "YELLOW HORSE" was mesmerizing in terms of out of focus focus of fragments of actions of bikers in vivid colors and motion.  Presence of deliberateness and the tension, as well as excitement was captured without any stories. The written text and the lyrical visual of "TUNG" was so serene and contemplative.  It seems like juxtaposition of layers of images were successfully mastered in this short.  The image of figure was not necessary it seemed for it specifies that it is Asian female, though it was not bad.  "ALL MY LIFE" was short but precise and beautiful with such a poetic invocation and declaration of who he is as a film maker:optimist. "Still Life" though I am not sure how the audience was reacting, but I thought it was such a simple but beautiful gesture of use of light, slight actions within a room changed the way the light was casted on the still life while there was a discussion of things in the background as sound.