Jamestown Baloos has a three-part structure, each of which is fed by a flow of heterogenous images and animated to the same lively (or striking, or juddering) rhythm, creating a flashing, sparkling, or shimmering effect.

The first part of this work unleashes an avalanche of mismatched images: moving objects, graphic games, and cut-paper animations. Multiple sequences associated with redundancy of signs (soldiers and assault vehicles, for example) put forth an antimilitary perspective, before reconfiguring themselves with humour, taking a Dadaist turn with gesticulations and successive retouching.

The central part of the film takes a rapid tempo to rattle off formless sequences and formal, colour-saturated motifs, evoking the creative poetry of another of Breer’s works, Recreation (1956-57) with its tormented stream of image-fragments and plastic lines.

These logicless streams and derisory use of disjointed scenic figures transform Jamestown Baloos into a parade. Interspersed with blurry streaks of paint, rapid-fire skips through a gallery full of paintings and a drumbeat over a multitude of strange bodies, they serve to make this parade (matched by tinkering with objects and a fathomless mechanics), while free of rhyme and reason, the very subject of the film.

Patrick Barrès
Professor at the University Toulouse Jean-Jaurès