|
Willie Danny Lyon 1985 New Mexico, color, b&w, 82 minutes. Willie is a realistic film made in Bernalillo, home of Willie Jaramillo and filmmakers Danny and Nancy Weiss Lyon. Defiantly individual and implaccable in the face of authority, Willie is repeatedly thrown into jail for relatively minor offenses. The filmmakers gain access to jail cells, day rooms, lunatic wards, and the worst cellblock in the penitentiary where Willie is locked up next to his childhood friend and convicted murderer, Michael Guzman. "Lyon
deftly blends footage of Jaramillo as an adult with scenes of
his more carefree youth. The effect is powerful. One gets the
sense of the ravages of time, coupled with a feel for the devastation
wrought by a life wasted." "Extraordinary
footage of inmates in the penitentiary is compelling, but it is
the ordinary in the film that is frightening." Willie was funded by grants from the New Mexico Arts Division and The National Endowment for the Arts. |