Bill's Hat

Réalisé par Joyce Wieland

Canada, 1967 (expérimental, 60 minutes, couleurs)

Description du film [en anglais] :
« Bill's Hat was a live cinema event performed twice in 1967, once at the experimental Toronto film festival Cinethon at Cinecity on Yonge Street in August (which had commissioned the film with a $1,000 prize), and again at the Art Gallery of Ontario in November. As biographer Jane Lind describes,'... This idyllic film was only a part of the whole performance of Bill's Hat, which included an altar with a hundred candles and pots of flowers. From the ceiling hung a pillow shaped like a heart. A woman lay silently on top of a piano with the hat on her belly. Besides the 50-minute movie projected on a screen, four simultaneous slide shows featured the 'hundreds' of people wearing the hat, and some of those sitting in the audience had small hand-held projectors that projected images on the backs of others. [...]' »
-- Cinémathèque québécoise (source)

Description du film :
« Oeuvre inachevée, muette, mais destinée à être présentée sous forme de performance, avec du son en direct. »
-- Cinémathèque québécoise (source)

Générique (partiel) :
Interprètes principaux :	Munro Ferguson

(sources)

Notes sur Bill's Hat

Film muet.

(sources)

Citation de la réalisatrice [en anglais]

« I got into this total thing when Cinecity asked me to do one for its festival in June. I don't know why it asked me. I'd never done one before. But still, I was really excited over it. [...] Since the first showing in June I've put on the cinema once more in New York for the Cinematheque and then for the third time at the Art Gallery [of Ontario]. But it may be my last total cinema. I wouldn't mind doing one every year, but it takes six months to prepare a good one and really they are too expensive. »
-- Joyce Wieland (source)

Citations sur Bill's Hat [en anglais]

« On the central screen, we were shown a film created specially for this gala: Bill's Hat. It began with shots of several chubby ladies in their nighties slow-motioning through the woods. They carried a fur hat which they tossed around whenever they thought of it. A dog accompanied them; there's no accounting for tastes. The audience behaved amazingly, considering the circumstances. Only a few gauche insensitives laughed, and one lady even chirruped: 'It's beautiful!' Soon, the central screen got to the main business, showing all kinds of people trying on the fur hat. [...] Ah, the excitement. »
-- Urjo Kareda (source)

« So for the next four days Cinethon, billed as a festival of North American New Cinema, will take over Cinecity from La Guerre Est Finie. [...] Among the films: Bill's Hat, in which Judy Lamarsh makes her movie debut. Also featuring Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory and Soupy Sales. [...] Cinethon's mixed media show by Joyce Wieland is, oddly enough, a mixture of media. Slides wil be projected on a screen while a film is being shown, with a kinetic jazz background added. 'She even wanted to cook some onions to provide a smell,' [festival co-ordinator Bill] Fothergill noted. 'But we didn't have anywhere to cook them.' »
-- Martin Knelman (source)

« Joyce [Wieland's] friends liked wearing her old raccoon-fur hat, and it looked different on each person. This gave her the idea of traveling around the United States and Canada to give many people a chance to wear her hat. Very quickly she discovered that people revealed their personality by the way they responded to her request that they put on the hat. »
-- Jane Lind (source)

Bibliographie sur Bill's Hat

Brèves parties de livres

LIND, Jane. Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire, Toronto, James Lorimer, 2001. [en anglais] (pp. 166-168)

Articles de journaux, de revues grand public ou de sites d'information en ligne

BEKER, Marilyn. « Expanded cinema rocks gallery », Globe and Mail, 30 novembre 1967. [en anglais]
DAULT, Gary Michael. « Bill's Hat », Artscanada, avril 1968. [en anglais]
KAREDA, Urjo. « Plastic bags have more life than Cinethon », Globe and Mail, 16 juin 1967. [en anglais]

Sites Web sur Bill's Hat

GAGNON, Monika Kin et Vanessa MEYER. « Dossiers sur les collections : Joyce Wieland's Unfinished Films », Cinémathèque québécoise, http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/joyce-wieland/bills-hat/. [en anglais]