Quick Billy (1970)

Wednesday, July 18, 2018 @ 8:00 PM
EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society - 2005 10 Ave SW, Calgary, AB
Admission by Donation

Monograph is pleased to present Bruce Baillie's 1970 feature film Quick Billy, on 16mm film with optical sound. Also screening along with the principal film are Quick Billy Rolls 14, 41, 43, 46, 47 and 52, a series of silent 3-minute reels shot during the construction of Quick Billy. Admission is by donation (pay what you can).

Quick Billy (1970) | Bruce Baillie | 16mm with Optical Sound - 60 minutes

The experience of transformation between life and death, death and birth, or rebirth in four reels...

‘Set in Kansas in 1863’, the film is a perfect vision of the early style of westerns, all coloured in sepia, with Quick Billy , the amorous, hard drinking hero, played admirably by Baillie himself. The spectacle that is Quick Billy is hard to describe, but Bruce Elder says of the film:

“One masterwork in the cinema that depicts the process by which its maker attempts to recover the true self — or, if not the true self, an authentic self that enters into uncorrupting relations with the world beyond it — is Bruce Baillie’s ‘Quick Billy (1970). Here an attack on the body, a bout with yellow fever, brings Baillie to confront his mortality. This confrontation brings him to revise his understanding of himself, his family, his personal history, and his goals. ‘Quick Billy’ tells the tale of his falling ill, of his becoming delirious and delusional and experiencing memories of his former self, of his transformation, and of his rebirth as authentic individual. While Baillie patterns the film on the ‘Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)’, the matrix from which ‘Quick Billy’ arises is really Gnosticism. Like the similarly Gnostic/Eleusian ‘Cantos’ of Ezra Pound, ‘Quick Billy’ is a tale of going into the underworld, experiencing terror, undergoing transformation, and being reborn. The agency that brings on the transformation in both cases is the experience of light.”
– (Bruce Elder in ‘A Body of Vision’)

Bruce Baillie (born in 1931, Aberdeen, South Dakota) is an American cinematic artist and founding member of Canyon Cinema in San Francisco. In 1961, Baillie, along with friend and fellow cinematic artist Chick Strand, among others, founded San Francisco Cinematheque. His body of cinematic work includes Quick Billy, To Parsifal, Mass for the Dakota Sioux, Castro Street, and the motion pictures Valentin de las Sierras, Roslyn Romance, and Tung, among many others.

Monograph would like to thank EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society for graciously hosting the series in their screening room space.

About Monograph Cinema

Monograph is an occasional screening series based in Calgary, Alberta. Each of our programs features the work of a single artist or filmmaker, with a focus on avant-garde and expanded cinema, both contemporary and historical. As Calgary's only presenter dedicated to experimental media, our goal is to elevate the local cinematic community by exposing audiences to significant works that would not otherwise find a venue. Monograph recognizes that art is work and is committed to paying IMAA screening fees for all of our programs and admission is always pay what you can.

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