Content Warning: This article deals with suicide and gun violence.
Heartache. In the first few frames of A Bullet Pulling Thread, viewers watch as the word is appliqued onto a quilt, the scene punctuated by the heavy whirring of a sewing machine. The camera shifts to a close-up on the focused gaze of quilter Marilyn Farquhar.
Screened at the Vancouver International Film Centre in June 2024, this feature-length documentary by Canadian filmmaker Ian Daffern traces Marilyn’s journey as a social justice advocate and as a quilter. The audience quickly learns that her quilting has changed in reaction to her relationship to tragedy: in January 2020, Marilyn’s brother Barry Shantz was killed by the RCMP in Lytton, B.C. during a mental health check.
“There is no quilt police,” she says to the camera. “There is no one to say, you can’t do this, or you can’t do that. I have the freedom….”
Featured image by Marina Dodis.
