Billy Ghost

In my life I have had many experiences with ghosts, whether in the form of spooky sounds heard late at night in empty rooms or in the form of unbidden memories, which are much scarier. My first childhood home in the Australian outback was the former house of a child killer who my mother claimed I would talk to when left alone. When I was ten, I moved to America and learned, through firsthand experience, all about the ghosts that haunt this troubled land. And when I was twenty-five, my father, still in Australia, passed away. That one haunts me more than the others.

During November 2020, just as we were starting to lose our minds in Covid isolation, my co-producer and partner Jasmine and myself, sent out the bat signal to our friends and collaborators and brought together old and new friends, all eager for a chance to be creative again. We were all feeling the worldwide grief and we all wanted to return to the dream of creating. All our unresolved relationships were taking on a new importance and weight. We pooled our resources, took our collective anxiety about the times, and channeled it into this handmade project about the messy, funny, and unsettling nature of grief and closure. I took a lot of inspiration from Miranda July, Anna Biller, Pixar, and that uncomfortable feeling that slips up the spine when someone asks me how close I am to my family and I already know how quiet it’s about to get when I answer. It was a strange project that required an impossible amount of trust and vulnerability for everyone involved.

In the time since making Billy Ghost, our growing collective has made three additional short films and each one has taught us more about ourselves as friends and artists.

Thank you for reading this and giving our film a chance. I look forward to attending your festival should we be so fortunate as to be accepted.

- Tim Burnham (writer/director)