Now Available in Digital Format: Dorothy Wiley’s Miss Jesus Fries on Grill

Posted May 28th, 2021 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events

Canyon Cinema is pleased to announce that an exhibition file of Dorothy Wiley‘s Miss Jesus Fries on Grill is now available for rent. Digital scanning provided by our friends at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).


Miss Jesus Fries on Grill (Dorothy Wiley, 1973, 12 minutes, color, sound, digital file or 16mm)

Miss Jesus Fries on Grill is a mysterious striking evocation of pain and the short-circuiting sensations of living in this predicament of death. It is a short film and again the color is fine and sharp as a good paring knife. Beginning with a newspaper clipping, written in a remarkably detailed manner of a bizarre accident in which a Miss Jesus was killed when a car smashed into the cafe where she was eating. The impact threw her on the grill, heated to 500 degrees.

“Cut to close-up of a baby being bathed in sink, screaming in silence. Then music box tinkles, but it is being wound too fast and the melody careens about in an insane manner and loudly. A voice recounts the old parochial school chestnut about St. Laurence, the martyr who was killed by roasting, and his rejoinder to his killer, ‘Turn me over. I think I’m done on this side.’ The voice wonders if Miss Jesus knew the story. The image of the baby continues, bathing, nursing, falling asleep.

“It is impossible to convey the combination of counterpointing feelings this film arouses. Like all great art, it is mysterious in its working. Dorothy Wiley has such a clear but tender eye for life. Tender, not sentimental. Miss Jesus is a simply constructed, highly poetical film.” – Mike Reynolds, Berkeley Barb