Bruce Baillie Films
Underground: Bruce Baillie Films
Bruce Baillie, co-founder of Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, was a pivotal figure in the experimental film scene on the American West Coast. Garbiñe Ortega will speak about the mystical and the mundane, the cosmic and the personal, the mythological and the autobiographical in Baillie’s films.
This evening’s speaker is Garbiñe Ortega. In 2022, she put together an exhibition of the work of Bruce Baillie, ‘Somewhere from Here to Heaven’, in Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao. For this, she also invited four filmmakers to create a work responding to Baillie’s language of film. She chose the film by Brazilian maker Ana Vaz as part of this screening in Eye.
Ortega: “Bruce Baillie was one of the most influential North American avant-garde filmmakers, besides being a big promoter of experimental film. In 1961, together with filmmaker friends, Baillie organised a screening in a house in Canyon, California, to show films ‘unwelcome anywhere else’, which in itself was a subversive act at that time. As a result of this spontaneous gesture, a large community was created which founded San Francisco Cinematheque as well as an avant-garde film distributor, which to this day is one of the most important worldwide, namely the co-operative Canyon Cinema.
“Baillie’s lyrical, observational films on 16mm elude any kind of category and genre yet they equally share an interest in fusing the mystical and the mundane, the cosmic and the personal, the mythological and the autobiographical. A constant journey, a symbiosis between nature and modern society, an intuitive search for light, the driving force to discover the spiritual essence of things, sustained by a profound commitment to a way of living and comprehending art, the idea found at the epicentre of these artists’ practice.”
Work by Bruce Baillie can also be seen in the exhibition Underground in Eye.
Programme
Mass for Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie, 1964, 20')
‘The Mass is traditionally a celebration of Life, thus the contradiction between the form of the Mass and the theme of death. The dedication is to the religious people (Dakota Sioux) who were destroyed by the civilisation that evolved the Mass.’ – Bruce Baillie
A Árvore (Ana Vaz, 2022, 20')
‘From Bruce Baillie’s All My Life; to the mourning and lament of Mass for the Dakota Sioux; to the love for a dancing body of Tung; to the mystical portrait of Mr Hayashi; to the impossible frontier of Valentin de las Sierras; and to the desire to advance the western frontier in the revelatory Quixote: all these films by Bruce Baillie converse with the nascent A Árvore, a ritual-film about my father – the artist, musician and mystic of the forest Guilherme Vaz, a man who also lived and reflected on the frontier, on the fatal advance of modernity over the peoples of the earth, a man who wrote music instinctively, who thought of cinema as his “spiritual father” and, above all, whose lived life was his greatest work.’ – Ana Vaz
Castro Street (Bruce Baillie, 1966, 10')
‘Inspired by a lesson from Erik Satie: a film in the form of a street – Castro Street – running by the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California… switch engines on one side, and colourful Standard Oil refinery tanks, smoke stacks, and buildings on the other – the street and film, ending at a lumber company, coloured red.’ – Bruce Baillie
All My Life (Bruce Baillie, 1966, 3')
‘A modern favourite! … A mere written description of the work might appear banal: a picket fence paralleling an ancient wooden sewage pipe among cascading, wild red roses – and finally a few telephone wires against the sky. Yet the result is to take an aspect of reality, sift it through the creative Mind, and produce a singular, joyous event!’ – Bruce Baillie
About Garbiñe Ortega
Garbiñe Ortega is a film curator, editor and producer. Her curatorial work has been programmed internationally by Film Society of Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, Film Museum in Vienna, National Gallery of Art (Washington) and Pacific Film Archive, among others. She is the editor of books including Cartas como películas (2021), included in the Brooklyn Rail Best 20 Art Books of the Year list. She is the producer of films by Matias Piñeiro (Tú me abrasas, 2024) and Lois Patiño (Samsara, 2023), among others. Currently, she is a programmer at the Encuentros de Pamplona, International Biennial of Culture, Art and Thought. She is also the artistic director of Dirdira Lab.
This is part of
Details
Production year
2024
Length
78 min.
Event language
English
Country
NL
Part of
Underground
This autumn, Eye Filmmuseum highlights the American avant-garde cinema of the 1960s. The exhibition and film programme feature both iconic and lesser-known works, showcasing the era's vibrant experimental spirit. Highlights include films by pivotal avant-garde figures such as Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage, as well as contributions from prominent visual artists like Bruce Conner, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol. This exploration of cinematic innovation is set against the backdrop of a changing society.
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