All three films in this program represent a journey of sorts. The title Words of Mercury derives from the final lines of Love’s Labour’s Lost. It announces a sudden death that ends the merriment and intrigue that enveloped the young lovers. This film journeys from a stark, wintery start and develops into a rich (but then too rich) ripeness that ends abruptly with the sight of a distant vehicle slipping into the night. The richness of fruition invites its demise. Bagatelle II is a quick journey through my filmmaking life, starting with some of my earliest footage and views of my childhood home in an industrial railroad hub and ending at the time the film was made. The last shot of a tower set in water was my unworthy tribute to Peter Hutton, who had passed away as I finished editing. Lastly, In the Stone House also journeys from winter’s icy grip to summer’s fruition, but at a much different time for myself and for this country. It was shot in the late 1960s, when Nathaniel Dorsky and I wanted to escape the clamor of Manhattan. We had the luck to be offered a house on a lake in rural New Jersey, where we planned to sequester ourselves and pursue filmmaking and spiritual searches aided by psychedelics. Our friends in the city, however, saw our retreat site as the perfect getaway for year-round vacations.

— Jerome Hiler