Quick Billy (1971)
Directed by Bruce Baillie
The South Dakota-born Baillie’s sweet films unfold like waking dreams. His hour-long opus of associations Quick Billy covers life cycles through overlapping sounds and images of things including ocean waves, moonlight, lovemaking, classical and jazz music, caged and wild animals, childhood photographs, and memories of the American West; these myriad simple gifts are gently offered for us to drift among. “Was thinking, why did I make Quick Billy?” Baillie writes by e-mail when queried about his film, which Anthology Film Archives will screen together with a related six-roll film correspondence between him and fellow filmmaker Stan Brakhage. “Seems to have been necessity, to explain my way through another mystery—as a poet must write the poem, or the farmer plant his pepinos and potatoes. Or as our friends the trees reach for the sky. Somehow we are asked for an explanation.” Aaron Cutler (Feb 20, 7:30pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “Essential Cinema”)
