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Availability: Out Of Print - This title is currently unavailable and/or out of print. Other versions may still be available; and will be listed on the right side of your screen. AKA: W.S. Burroughs: Cut Up Films || William Buys A Parrot || Towers Open Fire || The Cut-Ups || The Cut Ups || Bill & Tony || Bill And Tony || Ghost At No. 9 (Paris) || Ghost At Number Nine (Paris) || Commissioner Of Sewers || Thot-Fal'N Director: Antony Balch Released: 1963 [England/UK] Genre: Art Keywords:  Europe || Short Stories

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Avg. Rating:	4 / 5 (based on 1 rating). What did you think of it?
Plot:	Contains seven short films, as well as a booklet and several special features.
Overview:	Includes the following: The Cut-Ups 1966, Great Britain, 18 minutes 45'', black and white director: Antony Balch screenplay: William S. Burroughs cast: William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin William buys a parrot 1963, USA, 1 minute 25'', colour director: Antony Balch screenplay: William S. Burroughs Bill and Tony 1972, Great Britain, 5 minutes 11'', colour Original English version with removable Italian subtitles director: Antony Balch screenplay: William S. Burroughs cast: Antony Balch, William S. Burroughs Towers open fire 1963, Great Britain, 9 minutes 29'', black and white Original English version with removable Italian subtitles director: Antony Balch screenplay: William S. Burroughs cast: Antony Balch, William S. Burroughs, David Jacobs, Bachoo Sen, Alexander Trocchi Ghost at n°9 (Paris) 1963-1972, UK, 45 minutes 7'', colour and black and white Original English version with removable Italian subtitles director: Antony Balch screenplay: William S. Burroughs Commissioner Of Sewers A video portrait of William S. Burroughs by Klaus Maeck 1991, Germany, 28 minutes 35'', b&w director: Klaus Maeck cast: William S. Burroughs, Jürgen Ploog Thot-Fal'N (1978) by Stan Brakhage 1978, USA, 14 minutes, colour director: Stan Brakhage cast: Jane Brakhage, Tom Bartek, Gloria Bartek, W.S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlowski Introduction by Alessandro Gebbia (39 minutes 05'') Apparently, cinema was not a great passion in William S. Burroughs' life and work. Even if in actual fact, the times this great American writer used this artistic medium were not few, as a scriptwriter and as an actor. There are not many films based on Burroughs' literary works and this is because his work is not really cinematographic in the classic sense of the term, due to the little importance the writer gives to the narrative plot. His visual style is not linear but fragmentary. His writing style is narrative and slang with constant visual associations. It is logical therefore, that the film version of his writing cannot avoid having an "experimental" style and uses the cut-up, a chaotic and random method which derives from the Dadaist collages. It consists of cutting up and sticking pieces of text together in order to find new meanings. Burroughs worked, as we know, on this method from 1959 together with Brion Gysin, a unique experimental painter and novelist who actually discovered it first; Gysin and Burroughs used the cut-up method for several different artistic formations. From paper to canvas, from magnetic tape – working on recorders and tapes with the same look as contemporary cyberpunk – to film. In the cinematographic field, the results were a series of short films grouped under the title Thee Films, made with the Englishman Antony Balch between the end of the 50's and the end of the 60's. The first two short films, Towers Open Fire (1963) and The Cut-Ups (1966) have a rather similar structure and the same images are seen with a different but fast serial and confusing editing accompanied by a musical collage which is just as obsessive. In both, for example, we see the Dreamachine, a device which produces dream-like and hypnotic images, adjusted by Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1960. This machine, made up a fretworked cylinder which creates strobostrofic effects and permits Balch and Burroughs to deconstruct and reconstruct reality to the point of anguish. In actual fact, the Dreamachine represents cinema itself, vision in its purest state, as it reminds us of the inventions of the pre cinematographic era and in particular the Zootrope. In this sense, Burroughs and Balch's operation is a return to the origins of movement, from both the perceptual and conceptual point of view.
Cast:	William S. Burroughs  ||  Brion Gysin  ||  Antony Balch  ||  David Jacobs  ||  Bachoo Sen  ||  Alexander Trocchi (Click any actor to search for more of their movies!)
Running Time:	80 mins. (approx.)
Languages:	English (Dolby Digital 1.0 - Mono)
Subtitles:	Italian
Distributor:	Raro Video  [A Italy-Based Distributor]
Rating:	UN - "Unrated. This film has not been rated by the review board."
Features:	Full Screen Mono Introduction By Alessandro Gebbia (39 mins.) Collector's Booklet