dir James Bigood / USA / 1971 / 65 minutes
This was one I watched at home. Well, when I say home, I mean, on my friend R's sofa bed, in her place in Finsbury Park where I've just started staying. I got this DVD as a present from my colleagues when I left the BFI. Its distributed by the BFI and I reckon they might just have piles of unsold stock lying around. I'd been waiting quite a while for the mood to grab me to watch this, wanting to give it the time I felt it deserved. The cover is rich with colour, with a stunningly beautiful boy, in a kind of pixie outfit, a set of pipes poised in front of his beautiful lips, his legs crossed but the overlying one held up in a kind of awkwrad angle, enhancing the posed aspect of the image. We don't even think he's about to play those pipes - they are just held near his lips. We don't even think he is a real pixie. He is performing the image of a pixie, dressing up for a camera he is very aware of. He's proud of his costume, he looks sexy, otherworldly, so youthful. His eyes express both an invitation to come close, but also a command to stay put, to look but not touch. Its coy, its calculated, it makes you wonder what else he might show you, what other performance he might put on for you.
The reverse of the cover is hot fushia pink, and has three smaller images, 2 of which are far more expressly erotic rather than the youthful coy innocent sexuality exuding from the cover.
It feels heavy. theres a booklet inside with more images and an essay. This first image, the weightiness, the bfi logo, the rhapsodic blurb is all a kind of foreplay, building up to a 65 minutes I'm pretty sure will be thrilling. Its been around me for a month, on a shelf, then in boxes, handled each time I move house, picked up occasionally wondering if now is the time. The coil has been tightened over this time, and then now, on this lazy Wednesday morning, alone in a house that isn't my own, is the time to take the disc out and see what lies within....
