nwFilmCenter

The Films of Bruce Baillie

The film center and 40 Frames (www.40frames.org)welcome legendary experimental filmmaker Bruce Baillie to Portland for two programs of his classic works. One of the seminal forces of the 1960s experimental film community in San Francisco and "New American Cinema" movement, Baillie's early films integrated a spiritual, lyrical sensibility with a sensitive regard for the qualities inherent in the film form. Co-sponsored by Portland State University English Department, Film Studies Minor.

"The career of Bruce Baillie has two central aspects which are also features of the whole American avant-garde film movement. First, his films are generally intensely poetic, lyrical evocations of person and places in which the subject matter is transformed by the subjective methods used to photograph it. Second, many of his films display a strong social awareness, describing attitudes critical towards, and alienated from, mainstream American society. In many cases, Baillie fuses these concerns within single films. Stylistically, Baillie's films are characterized by moments of haunting, evanescent beauty. An object will appear with spectacular clarity, only to dissolve away an instant later. Light itself often becomes the subject, shining across the frame or reflected from objects, suggesting a level of poetry in the subject matter that lies beyond easy interpretation. Baillie combines images with other images, and images with sound, in dense, collage-like structures. Thus, many of his films cut frequently between scenes, or superimpose objects on each other. One is constantly aware of a restlessness, an instability, which seems to result from his images' appearance and flow. It is significant, too, that many of Baillie's films contain, or are structured as, journeys." –Fred Camper

Wed, Dec 6, 2006 at 8 PM	MASS FOR THE DAKOTA SIOUX DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US Dedicated by Baillie to "the religious people who were destroyed by the civilization which evolved the Mass." ( 20 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Dec 6, 2006 at 8 PM	VALENTINE DE LA SIERRAS DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US The song of revolutionary hero, Valentin, sung by Jose Santollo Nasido en Santa Cruz de la Soledad; Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. ( 10 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Dec 6, 2006 at 8 PM	QUIXOTE DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US "A one-year journey through the land of incessant progress, researching those sources which have given rise twenty years later to the essential question of survival." ( 45 min ) ^ Top
Thu, Dec 7, 2006 at 7 PM	ALL MY LIFE DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US "Caspar, California, old fence with red roses." ( 3 min ) ^ Top
Thu, Dec 7, 2006 at 7 PM	QUICK BILLY DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US "The experience of transformation between life and death, death and birth, or rebirth in four reels. . ." ( 60 min ) ^ Top
Thu, Dec 7, 2006 at 7 PM	ROSLYN ROMANCE DIRECTOR: BRUCE BAILLIE US "The work seems to be a sort of manual, concerning all the stuff of the cycle of life, from the most detailed mundanery to. . .God knows." ( 17 min ) ^ Top