Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Bruce Baillie


Bruce Baillie: Mr. Hayashi (1961)


Bruce Baillie: All My Life (1966)

Finnish TV1 just showed Sami van Ingen's documentary on San Francisco-based experimental film-maker Bruce Baillie (b. 1931). The relaxed Mr. Baillie was shown making pancakes and giving his accounts on his films All My Life (1966), Castro Street (1966) and Valentin de Las Sierras (1968), which were all featured in van Ingen's documentary. Especially Castro Street is a visually breath-taking film collage, inspired by Erik Satie and consisting of multiple superimpositions and other complicated cinematic trickery depicting trains of a railroad yard, oil refinery, smokestacks and buildings in an industrial byway in Richmond, combining both colour and black & white footage. Baillie himself wrote in his notes at the time: "the confrontation of opposites (Carl Jung)/'the strength or conflict of becoming'". Quite psychedelic, this one (so, somehow fitting to the 1960s San Francisco).

  • Bruce Baillie's Official Website (through which you can also support the artist)
  • Bruce Baillie @ IMDB
  • Baillie's Castro Street @ Bay Area Bonus Tracks and B-Sides
  • 1 comment:

    Juri said...

    It was shown earlier, some three years back. I taped it at the time. CASTRO STREET is a masterpiece.