… a field of clashing perspectives – reminiscent of early Rauschenberg: Peter Brunette reviews Bullets for Breakfast

Bullets for Breakfast

Not a film for those who like strong narratives with clear characters, this full-length experimental feature (77 minutes) makes real intellectual demands on its audience. The audience is amply rewarded with a fascinating display of the power of technology to produce art and make us think. The entire film was produced on an optical printer, as were all of director Holly Fisher’s previous, shorter films, clearly an outgrowth of Fisher’s work as an editor (on, for instance, the Oscar-nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin?). Through this technical device, Fisher provocatively juxtaposes–literally, through double exposure–postcard images of women taken from the entire history of Western art with some eight-millimeter footage of John Ford’s classic My Darling Clementine she found in a closet. A network television documentary about women workers losing their jobs in a Maine smokehouse is also neatly deconstructed in the process, but with no overt intervention by the filmmaker. Even the soundtrack becomes a field of clashing perspectives, as the voice of a male pulp-western writer contrasts with that of feminist’ poet Nancy Nielsen. But Fisher’s quiet, subtle feminism convinces through suggestion rather than finger-pointing; an added delight is that her double-exposed images, reminiscent of early Rauschenberg, are quite beautiful. (PB) (Music Box, 7:00)