The first film works Burroughs was involved in are also the ones he had the most involvement in. These were the collaborative avant-garde films of the 1960's, the same period as the development of many of the literary techniques and concepts just mentioned. It is easy to see this when analysing the works.

The films in question are Towers Open Fire and The Cut-Ups, both directed by British film maker and independent distributor Antony Balch, who Burroughs and Gysin became friends with at the Beat Hotel. Balch was just the person the two of them were looking for to translate their concepts into the medium of film. Burroughs and Gysin were highly partial to experimentation in all forms of the arts, and it was not long until the three of them as well as Ian Somerville teamed up and began to explore the cinematic potential of their ideas.

Towers Open Fire was the first film to be made, shot between 1961 and 1962, and was mainly a collaboration between Burroughs and Balch, although Somerville and Gysin are credited and their influences do appear in the film in some form. It is a black and white, hand held (shot by Balch himself), encoded structural piece that is "a cinematic interpretation of many of Burroughs' major themes." (p.170, Sargeant, 2001) As Sargeant goes on to say, it is not a cut-up itself, although it does contain the first evidence of the technique being applied directly to film (as The Cut-Ups expands on) in a short cut-up sequence shot on a quayside in Paris.

A "collage of the main themes and situations or 'routines' that appear in Burroughs cut-up novels of the period" (Bridgett, date unknown), Towers portrays "the destruction of the stock market and disintegration of the Board", as described by Sargeant. This is shown by Burroughs himself in camouflage and a gas mask, brandishing an 'orgasm gun' and shooting photographs of families and stereotypical images of social happiness. Effectively destroying the pictorial form of language and the conventional representation of happiness. When Burroughs commands "Towers open fire!", sound waves are emitted by antennae to attack the Boards' senses.

When these weapons are deployed 'The Board', a group of suit wearing men sitting around a table, with pictograms and Egyptian symbols pinned to the wall in the background, dissolve and disappear. This is Burroughs' notion of 'control' being broken down, and with it these scenes are intercut with "various other images of autonomous liberation." (p.170, Sargeant, 2001) These are such images as Balch masturbating and Burroughs waving his hands magically over film canisters.

We are then left with the resolution of photographs and the Boards papers blowing away, connoting the end of their rule and with it their mode of communication. Here we see an exact example of Burroughs war against 'control' as well as his distain for conventional language. The icons of weaponry are there with the 'orgasm gun', a sexual weapon (connoting the sexual aggression present in Burroughs writing), and the towers themselves as a powerful sonic weapon in Burroughs arsenal, and another incarnation of his combating of 'control'/the Board by sensory assault. It is backed up by shots of Burroughs holding a tape recorder. This idea of sonic warfare returns in his writings later in the decade and goes on to influence music and film alike, as will be discussed later.

Yet it is not only the connoted themes and ideas of Burroughs' literature that are present in Towers, it contains within the voiceover (Burroughs himself, once again) a brief passage from the 1966 edition of The Soft Machine, to add further strength to Burroughs' stamp on the movie as well as a direct link to his literature.

When deconstructed in this way it is clear to see Burroughs' concepts within this work. There are other key elements in this film that also feature in the other of this period, generally because much of what was shot was used interchangeably in the films. This is characteristic of Burroughs methods as he often overlapped work in novels and included material written long ago in newer writings (the title 'Towers Open Fire' was used as a chapter heading in Nova Express written after the film was made). Plus all these films were shot in many different locations, giving the Beat sense of travel and constant movement that was true their nature whilst filming. Also the appearance of Burroughs himself in all the films refers to the 'slipstream' idea elaborated on from Sargeants' book. Gysins invention of the 'Dreamachine' appears in both Towers and The Cut-Ups, which is another tool to achieve the mental liberation that their practises are meant to encourage.

The second film, The Cut-Ups, although not such an involved and encoded piece as Towers, it is still very relevant in its application of Burroughs' work in film. This was a more extreme experiment with less narrative to extract and was a wider collaboration than Towers as it involved Gysin and Somerville more than its predecessor. Much of the footage used in The Cut-Ups was originally shot between 1961 and 1965, amongst the footage used in Towers, for a silent documentary to be entitled 'Guerrilla Conditions'.  This film was never fully realised so they used what they had shot for it for The Cut-Ups, once again merging two texts, one never accomplished and used as a tool to create something new.

Although this collective had never really expressed an interest in the avant-garde movements present at the time they wanted to achieve something similar to the structural films of the New York, and various other, co-op groups, and with the use of the newly developed cut-up technique they had the perfect tool to create an original piece. The film is a montage of various routines at various speeds; Burroughs walking around, someone dancing in the street, Gysin painting, the Dreamachine, Burroughs dressed as a doctor examining a boy etc, with each shot an equal length (with the exception of the last). These scenes do not cut together to form a narrative, more an abstract montage, putting it into the structural film bracket. It was an exact science, as Balch wanted each scene to be just long enough for the audience to take in:

"I asked myself what was the shortest length that anyone could really take a scene in, shorter than a foot not everyone could see everything, longer than a foot and they'd have time to examine it." (p.12, Cinema Rising #1, 1972)

He also experimented with speeds of film, showing it at 16 frames a second on occasions, to further disorientate the viewer.

Each scene was originally conventionally edited to create a basic narrative scenario, it was then that the cut-up method was employed. After cutting the film into four approximately equal lengths and then into foot long strips, Balch had these pieces randomly stuck together by an employee to construct what we see as The Cut-Ups now*. By literally cutting up the footage and randomly sticking it back together, taking away the purposeful construction of a considered edit, it is a direct filmic interpretation of the literary cut-up.

Although this was not the only avant-garde method applied and the use of sound gives the film a dimension literature could not achieve. The image is supported by a layered, voiceover engineered by Somerville, with Burroughs and Gysin repeating the permutated phrases, "Yes/Hello/Look at that picture/Does it seem to be persisting?/Good/Thank You". These are instructions from a Scientology auditing test. The soundtrack was made totally independently of the image but runs for exactly the same amount of time. It serves to add another layer of disruption, as the audience is not used to hearing language utilised in such an abstract way, divorced from the picture. Although, it does link formically with the thematic concepts of the piece. A strange union present in Burroughs writing.

So, where Towers and The Cut-Ups differ is the former connotes Burroughs concepts through representation (save the brief cut-up section), whereas The Cut-Ups is a formic exercise in bringing the cut-up technique in full into film "to make explicit a psycho sensory process" as Burroughs describes in The Third Mind. Unfortunately at the time this was not really acknowledged as the films were not shown to wide audiences (The Cut-Ups was cut down from 23 minutes to 12 then subsequently withdrawn form where it was first shown because members of the audience were leaving things behind in the cinema in their confusion after seeing the film!). Also they were not embraced by the avant-garde contingent that should have supported them. When Burroughs returned to New York the co-op of Jonas Mekas and Adams-Sitney shunned them because their collective's "reputation was too heavy"** since, "William had shot his wife and he had published the most shocking book of all time."*** So it is only in recent years (thanks to P-Orridge, as is written later) that these films have obtained their due recognition as relevant 1960's avant-garde works.

* A similar method was used to create the cut-up sequence in Towers Open Fire.

** Brion Gysin interview (Cantrill, 1984)

*** Ibid.

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