In Valentin I just shot simply but used a telephoto lens with an extension tube on the back, which gives you a very limited focal plane, a few inches. No one I know ever uses it with a long lens, especially with a moving subject, but I really liked the way it looked. I had to get into the flesh of that town, with the merciless sun beating into the bricks of the street and all the death-every night there’d be something or somebody killed, lying in the street in the morning. I had met up with this (archetypal) young girl, riding her pony. And I was afraid to meet her father.

I’d sent word out trying to see her, and he sent word back to come meet him, and I thought, “Oh, God!”. But he turned out to be a very nice fellow: Manuel Sasa Zamora, of Jalisco. They were very poor and lived behind a big gate and had a horse and a dog named Penquina. That horse didn’t like me and would not let me film. I had to give it up for a while. Later, I named my horse after the film - Valentina.

Bruce Baillie
A Critical Cinema 2, interviewed by Scott MacDonald (June, 1989)