The Art & Times of William Farley : 07 of 07
By Robert Anbian, Release Print, Vol. XVIII No. 9, November 1995When did filmmaking come in?
When I was in graduate school, I took a film history class. The instructor said, "You can either write a paper about a film, or you can make a film." The idea of writing a paper was absolute terror to me.
You were so afraid of writing that you would even make a film?I said, what the hell. Because it wasn't so far removed. At the time I was working as a conceptual artist. So all of my objects were about ideas. Also, there Was a real movement in sculpture to be doing videotapes. This is when videotapes were on reel to reel, and black and white. There was a level of permission I had never seen before. So by the time I got out of graduate school, I had more credits in film than in sculpture. (laughter] I was hooked. The camera has been my tool for self-discovery, recording what happens to me or what I'm thinking.
I'll tell you a story. I made this film, Marthain, which was about the idea of being Irish. I went to Ireland and walked around for two months with a camera and a tape recorder. I came back and spent a year cutting the film. The film was dedicated to my father and my Uncle Tom, his brother. I made it for those two men. I had an evening of films, including this film, at the [SF] Cinematheque in 1978 or 79. After the showing, a man came up to me. He was about 6'4", about 75 years old. One of his hands was the size of both of my hands. And he took my hand and shook it. He kept shaking it and thanking me in a very quiet way for making the film. And his face was the map of Ireland. He wouldn't let go of my hand. And I recognized that man. That was my father. It's hard even to tell the story. I recognized that all of my reasons for making that film were for that man. I didn't have to show that film anymore. The film had reached beyond anything that I could ever hope for. Those kind of moments inspire you for a very long time. They're so fundamental, they're not negotiable. I was not hallucinating. I was in real time. I had a very, very powerful experience of that man as the essence of my father and uncle. He gave me everything back at that one showing. What are one's expectations for being successful?
I love the phrase, "those kind of moments are not negotiable."[laughter] What I was getting at was that no one could talk me out of it.