Bill's Hat

Directed by Joyce Wieland

Canada, 1967 (experimental, 60 minutes, colour)

Film Description:
"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)

Film Description [in French] :
"Oeuvre inachevée, muette, mais destinée à être présentée sous forme de performance, avec du son en direct."
-- Cinémathèque québécoise (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Principal Cast:	Munro Ferguson

(sources)

Notes about Bill's Hat

Silent film.

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"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)

Quotes about Bill's Hat

"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)

Bibliography for Bill's Hat

Brief Sections of Books

Lind, Jane. Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2001. (pp. 166-168)

Articles from Newspapers, Magazines, or News Websites

Beker, Marilyn. "Expanded cinema rocks gallery." Globe and Mail, November 30, 1967.
Dault, Gary Michael. "Bill's Hat." Artscanada, April 1968.
Kareda, Urjo. "Plastic bags have more life than Cinethon." Globe and Mail, June 16, 1967.

Web Sites about Bill's Hat

Gagnon, Monika Kin, and Vanessa Meyer. "Dossiers sur les collections : Joyce Wieland's Unfinished Films." Cinémathèque québécoise. http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/joyce-wieland/bills-hat/.