Writer and Director: Bill Brown; Music: Angela Gabriel and Bill Brown.
"Bill Brown's ROSWELL ... takes a fanciful, humorous look at the supposed crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, an 'event' UFO-types cite to this day as evidence of a massive government cover-up. Brown, a recent Harvard graduate who appears in the film and whose voice is heard on the sound track, seems to take the event seriously. He wonders what the craft was doing in Roswell of all places, speculating it was piloted by a 'star boy ... joyriding through the cosmos' who 'got lost and lost control.' But Brown also sees his subject playfully, as if through a child's eyes - objects suggest others, nothing has a stable meaning, flying saucers are fun. The film begins with a Frisbee flying through the air, a metaphor repeated many times. The fish-eye lens used for some landscape shots curves the horizon line, making the sky seem enclosed - navigable, traversable. In the film's strongest image Brown stands facing the camera with a sheaf of papers in his hand, as an animated drawing of a spaceship scoots across the paper, suggesting a connection between UFO fantasies and the magical possibilities of cinema." - Fred Camper, reviewing the Onion City Film Festival in the Chicago Reader
1994, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 20m, $60
"HUB CITY conflates an account of a devastating tornado (illustrated by an image of a cowboy twirling a rope) with the death of Buddy Holly, a fellow native of Lubbock, Texas." - Fred Camper, Reader
1997, 16mm, color/so, 15m, $60
"In the voice-over to his most recent film, CONFEDERATION PARK, Texas filmmaker Bill Brown makes reference to 'the secret languages of exile,' and while this reflective, even somber film presents a pastiche of places across Canada where Brown has lived, its real subject is the limits of knowledge. Its long takes are accompanied by verbal meditations on the nation's recent history, including the separatist bombings in Quebec during the 60s, and the battle between English and French becomes a metaphor for the filmmaker's divided mind. Brown applies stickers with city names to a huge outdoor map of Canada, his voice-over suggesting that 'we've found our place in the universe' as a result of the 'Copernican revolution' - but then the stickers are blown away by the wind. Brown implies that images are insufficient: we need to know their history, their locations, their meaning. But landscapes can't be fully decoded, nor past events captured on film: in the final shot a woman sings, 'I don't know where he's headin' for,' while a car travels in a circle." - Fred Camper, Reader
1999, 16mm, color/so, 32m, $90
2001 16mm 23 minutes, black and white, sound $75 Rental