Quick Billy

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quick_billy

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Directed by: Bruce Baillie

year: 1970 55 minutes

In QUICK BILLY, the experience of transformation between life and death, death and birth (or rebirth) in four reels. "[Bruce] Baillie once related a dream in which he, as a doctor, had to suffer the illnesses and then die the deaths of all people," writes Kathleen Michael Connor. "Any human being willing to take on responsibilities for the deaths of others cannot harm them, and this is what the viewer instinctively knows." Film artist Bruce Baillie has committed his whole life to creating a more peaceful world through his art. One of the founders of Canyon Cinema (and, by extension, San Francisco Cinematheque), his works are in the Library of Congress and considered national treasures.

Canyon Cinema

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Reviews

Doug Graves

a masterpiece! I love this movie so much. Bruce Baillie is one of the all time great cinematic artists!


fmklalex

Quick Billy--much of it filmed on the Pacific Coast near Mendocino while Bruce Baillie had hepatitis--was introduced at its 1971 premiere at New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art with the following note: "The essential experience of transformation, between Life and Death, death and birth, or rebirth. In four reels, the first three adapted from the Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The fourth reel is the form of a black and white one-reeler Western, summarizing the material of the first three reels, which are color and abstract."