Bruce Baillie
Bruce Baillie (September 24, 1931 - April 10, 2020) was an American cinematic artist and founding member of Canyon Cinema in San Francisco. In 1961, Baillie, along with friend and fellow cinematic artist Chick Strand, among others, founded San Francisco Cinematheque.
Quick Billy
A psychedelic montage of home movie footage gives way to a silent western story.
Valentin de las Sierras
Skin, eyes, knees, horses, hair, sun, earth. Old song of Mexican hero, Valentin, sung by blind Jose Santollo Nadiso en Santa Cruz de la Soledad.
Castro Street
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.
All My Life
The film is made up of one single take. The camera pans to the left, focusing on a dilapidated fence in a rural field, as Ella Fitzgerald's "All My Life" plays on the soundtrack. At the end of the 3 minute film, the camera tilts up to the blue sky just as the song ends.
Quixote
Co-founder of Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque and one of the godparents of experimental film, Bruce Baillie (1931-2020) has forged a singular path in his visionary explorations of the world, his exquisite treatment of light and fragmented storytelling influencing successive generations of like-minded filmmakers.
Mass for the Dakota Sioux
An experimental film dedicated to the Dakota Sioux, which follows the form of the Christian Mass. A series of images of contemporary America interwoven with the ritual spiriting away of a dead Indian.
To Parsifal
The 16-minute film falls neatly into two nearly equal parts, separated by fades to and from black. Part one depicts a sunrise, a journey out to sea in a boat, then gulls flying around the boat while fish are cleaned, and finally the journey back and the reappearance of land.