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(c) Alain Bibal

Lee Ranaldo x 'Quick Billy'

VIDEODROOM 2025
Viernulvier & Film Fest Gent
  • Fri 10.10
    20:00 - 21:10
    De Vooruit, Gent
    THEATERZAAL
    Tickets

VIERNULVIER shares a long history with Lee Ranaldo. Around twenty years ago, he performed here with Sonic Youth (their battered piano still stands as a silent witness), and he has returned several times for solo shows. For Videodroom, he enters into a dialogue with Quick Billy, a film by American experimental filmmaker Bruce Baillie (1931–2020), using his trademark off-kilter guitar work. This project is a co-production with the Curtas Festival in Porto.

Gedeeltelijk Oosterse filosofie, gedeeltelijk western met revolverhelden

Part of

About Quick Billy

Part Eastern philosophy, part gunslinger Western: Quick Billy unfolds as a “horse opera in four parts” — a poetic meditation on the transition from life to death.

The result is an undeniable visual masterpiece. Baillie’s transitions between images are nothing short of astonishing — almost unbelievable — and likely unprecedented in film history. He completely dissolves the boundary between pure abstraction and representation, evoking a rich palette of emotions: from overwhelming beauty and awe to moments of fear and even humor.

Baillie weaves abstract cinema together with lyrical documentary, culminating in a tribute to silent Westerns.

About Lee Ranaldo 

Lee Ranaldo is a musician, visual artist and writer, best known as co-founder of the legendary band Sonic Youth, which helped shape the sound of alternative rock from the 1980s on. Alongside his musical output, he's also exhibited visual work and published poetry, journals and writings on music.

In recent years, Lee has been performing Contre Jour with his partner Leah Singer — immersive sound and light shows featuring suspended electric guitars and swirling projections. His acoustic solo piece In Virus Times came out on Mute Records in 2021, and Sonic Youth dropped the archival live album Walls Have Ears in early 2024. This summer, Lee tours Canada with Medicine Singers, following their 2023 single Honor Song (Stone Tapes/Joyful Noise).

‘’Quick Billy crowns ten years of Baillie’s lyrical and pastoral film sensibility. (...) He may have created his most complete and satisfying film — one that, through its mysterious openness, allows us to project into it so many unfinished parts of ourselves. (...) I don’t expect crowds to suddenly rush to the Whitney Museum of American Art to see Quick Billy. I’m realistic enough to know that most of the film-going public is still wandering the hallways of Eternal Hollywood. The art of Bruce Baillie is for the fortunate, or the prepared, few.’’
- Jonas Mekas