BURROUGHS, WILLIAM - Thee Films - 1950s-1960s

When writer William S. Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin met Anthony Balch at the Beat Hotel in Paris at the start of the 60s they knew they had the ideal person to assist them in translating the ideas they had explored in experimental art forms to film. Balch began his movie-making career collaborating with Burroughs on two shorts Towers Open Fire and The Cut Ups. The former is a relatively straightforward attempt to capture the essence of Burroughs writing on film, utilizing key themes and situations featured in his books. The latter is an attempt to cinematically represent the art form. To achieve this, each scene was filmed and edited in its entirety before the cut up method was applied -- physically cutting the movie into foot long lengths and splicing them together randomly. Following the death of Anthony Balch in 1980, the films remained untouched and virtually forgotten at his home until the intervention of Psychic TVs Genesis P.Orridge, who salvaged and archived them. This uniq