Wavelength

Wavelength is broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm, on Fridays at 2:30pm and repeats on Mondays at 5am.
28th Nov 2014

Dirt and Bobby Driscoll.

Several weeks ago, Ed Baxter, director of Resonance, asked me if it was possible to see a copy of “Dirt”, a film made in 1965 by underground filmmaker, poet and publisher of the Dead Language Press; Piero Heliczer. Ed was specifically interested in child film star Bobby Driscoll who appears fleetingly in “Dirt”, dressed as a nun. This section of the film is only available as a 16mm print, (“Dirt” was originally made as a 3 hour standard 8mm epic, according to Tom Raworth who wrote Heliczer’s obituary in The Independent). Today, at the Science Gallery we will run the silent 15 minute version titled “Dirt, Bath Sequence”, distributed by LUX London. Bobby Driscoll appears at the beginning and end of the film and this was his last film appearance. “On March 30 1968, two children were playing in an abandoned tenement building in the East Village (New York), and found the body of Bobby Driscoll lying on a cot with two empty bottles of beer and a number of religious pamphlets scattered nearby”. This programme includes Ed Baxter’s reflection on Bobby Driscoll, spoken by Irish story-teller Willy Carr and accompanied by the Resonance Radio Orchestra.