Bruce Baillie

During the 1970s I shot, helped to make, or commissioned about ten document films, mainly about film-makers. This film is one of them. It was made with Dan Ochiva, who acted as cameraman on about half of the footage. I shot the rest, and then edited the film. It is a record of a conference held at the State University of New York at Buffalo on March 22-25, 1973. Among the participants filmed were Gerald O'Grady (who organized the conference), Will Hindle, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Robert Creeley, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett, Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, Ed Pincus, Stan Vanderbeek, Ed Emshwiller, Sally Dixon, James Cox. This footage will eventually become part of my film PEOPLE, PLACES, THE 1970S. –R. H.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

An early work by Bruce Baillie, originally a Canyon Cinemanews.

Finnish filmmaker Sami van Ingen, a great-grandson of Robert Flaherty, made an expedition to the residence of Bruce Baillie not long after the turn of the century and documented the results of his visit. Study Reel is, as Baillie described it in a letter to the Brazilian magazine Tropico, "filled with commentary on various of the films along with the one-hour video of myself and family".

From Ross Lipman's "personal ethnographies" series, an informal visit with legendary filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State.

Video recording made by Bruce Baillie to accompany public presentations and classroom screenings of his work.

Filmed portrait of Bruce Baillie, a mythical figure from the northern Californian experimental film scene. Produced without a script or shooting schedule, the film lies somewhere between a home movie and documentary. It integrates chance and discontinuity, repeats the same sequences in loops, alternates between color and black and white, and is interspersed with frames that are empty, blurry, or reversed. The soundtrack consists of an improvised monologue by Bruce Baillie which unfolds without interruption, following his discontinuous flow of thought.

(The Laundry Lesson) For Jefferson Sunflower

With Lorie, Wind and BB.