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BRUCE BAILLIE'S, SALUTE (Translated from the French by the author, Marcel Joyeux).
"Abbreviated notes from the article, Salut, et Les Memoires d'un Ange de Bruce Baillie, appearing in L'Illumination, Paris, November, '08, by Marcel Joyeux:
' - with the purpose of enlightening contemporary audiences who have tended to view the recent work* from a superficial, linear or literal point of view.'
'Metaphoric imagery, implicit language of simple, yet universal ...Joie!'
*(Part I, Salute, has seen a limited, temporary release, while this, M. Baillie's final work, remains in progress).
'Beginning with children at dusk, flocks of starlings in flight, birth, sea, and the title, My Last Masquerade, lyrical film artist, Bruce Baillie's declared last film will be in three parts, Salute, Night, and Light.'
'From my recent interview, a few of the thematic elements as projected by l'auteur: Introduction of the element of illusion (masquerade). Imagery of war - documentary, the movies, and the author recording himself, self-consciously in uniform! One cannot here avoid an implicit reference to the Bhagavadgita; the warrior, Arjuna and Lord Krishna in Dharma combat on the battle field, as metaphor for the human dilemma in confrontation with the world of time/space, illusion of opposites, attachment to the merely transcient, etc.'
'Memory and memoir commes toutes les choses, Gautama Buddha's "ten-thousand things". Angel of the mind, essential memory, Mind of mind prior to all sentiency, Truth abiding in fiction, the necessity of language, The Word, and so on. Le facon de parler, le langage concret, la langue langeur. L'image prosaique - the perfect medium - in parallel with the apparencies of everyday reality. Narrative, l'histoire, l'Art.
'Some further keys to the work in progress from M. Baillie's voluminous notes of the past 15 years:
Cantos 9, Part III: "Crossing the river of my preferences".
Cantos 10, Part II: Spes una mundi perditi (Sole hope for the lost world - Th. Merton, "Learning to Love").
Cantos 11, Part II: (With images from a village in the Philippines of laundry blowing in the afternoon wind). "Ancient banners of mortality blown by the heavenly host!".
Cantos 5, Part II: "In the Night, with none other than the Light that burned in my heart."
- San Juan de las Cruz.
Cantos 3, Part III: "And the remnants of the world were renewed by children, and it was called Paradise".'
'Here, the film's form', I continue (M. Joyeux), 'is deliberately conventional, i.e., non-abstract, yet the imagery is essentially connotative, transcendental in nature, or simply poetic, describing human necessity to identify itself. This, mes cheres, is our author's purpose and final touch, le pointe du verite - the touch of truth! Something to leave you - le Monde - a veritable last word as to the universal Why, Who, What, concealed in ordinary language, so to speak, as in being what it/one appears to be. It is not of the form yet does lie within. Poetry concealed within the word, yet not the wording itself. The Word manifest in mere prose. De Chardin's noumenal wed with phenomena, Light in night. Memoirs from Les Anges!"
-Marcel Joyeux
Paris, November, 2008
Featuring:
Tung
Mass for the Dakota Sioux
Valentin de las Sierras
Castro Street
All My Life
1966, DVD Sale, $50 individual use, $300 institutional use. Currently sold out
Featuring:
Quixote
Here I Am
1962-65, DVD Sale, $50 individual use, $300 institutional use.
First film, shot in San Francisco - combination documentary and fantasy, partly portraying a lovely friend, Miss Wong.
"... remembering a potentiality of life which has been overgrown by civilization. ..." - Jung
1960-1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 27.5m, $85
1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 3m, $20
Early work, originally a Canyon Cinemanews.
1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 8m, $25
Made on the north coast of California, in Mendocino ... combining spontaneity and preconception in a film that is essentially a short lesson in feature form. On one level, a portrait of Paul Tulley ....
1962, 16mm, b&w/so, 15m, $45
A never before released early film made for an Oakland school for mentally disturbed children.
1962, 16mm, b&w/so, 11m, $35
Dedicated to Albert Verbrugghe, whose wife was killed in Katange by UN soldiers, 1963.
1962-1963, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $20
He who becomes slowly wise.
1963, 16mm, color/so, 16m, $50
A film Mass, dedicated to nobility and excellence.
Synopsis: The film begins with a short introduction - "No chance for me to live, Mother, you might as well mourn." Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux Chief. Applause for a lone figure dying on the street. INTROIT. A long, lightly exposed section composed in the camera. KYRIE. A motorcyclist crossing the San Francisco Bridge accompanied by the sound of Gregorian chant, recorded at the Trappist Monastery in Vina, California. The sounds of the "mass" rise and fall throughout. GLORIA. The sound of a siren and a short sequence of a '33 Cadillac proceeding over the Bay Bridge and disappearing into a tunnel. The final section of the Communion begins with the OFFERTORY in a procession of lights and figures to the second chant. The anonymous figure from the introduction is discovered again, dead on the pavement. The body is consecrated and taken away past an indifferent, isolated people, accompanied by the final chant. 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 who were destroyed by the civilization which evolved the Mass.
1963-1964, 16mm, b&w/so, 20m, $60
In four parts, one reel.
"More relevant than ever, Bruce Baillie's 'American Symphony' ... released in 1990 via an S-VHS master." - Frankfurter Zettung
"American as conquistador ...." - P. Adams Sitney
"- quixotic filmmaker become the hero of his own film." - S. Frey
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.
1965, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 45m, $135
Cycle scrambles poem. Bass solo by Pat Smith, LA.
1965, 16mm, color/so, 9m, $30
By "Canyon Cinema Documentary Film Unit" - Tulley, Baillie, etc. Made in Spring, '66 for a small community of Indian people near Laytonville, California.
1966, 16mm, b&w/so, 5m, $20
*Included at no charge for shows devoted to the work of Bruce Baillie, totaling 80 minutes running time or more.
1966, 16mm, b&w/so, 1m, Free*
From Morning Star.
1966, 16mm, color/so, 2m, $20
1966, 16mm, b&w/color/si, 5m, $20
Coming of consciousness.
1966, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 10m, $35
Caspar, California, old fence with red roses.
1966, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
Song of revolutionary hero, Valentin, sung by Jose Santollo Nasido en Santa Cruz de la Soledad; Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico.
1968, 16mm, color/so, 10m, $30
The experience of transformation between life and death, death and birth, or rebirth in four reels. ...
1967-1970, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 60m, $135
My ROMANCE is intended for something like "broadcast" form, or like a correspondence ... not so much for showing a big batch of it at one sitting. Eventually it should be in both film and videotape form.
The Introduction, Intro. I & II, is finished now. I will send rolls from time to time and hope one of these days to put the rest of it in shape for you to see. Meanwhile, I'll be continuing to record the ROMANCE wherever I am.
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.
1974, 16mm, color/so, 17m, $60
Made for the Viennale Film Festival.
1998, 35mm, color/so, 2m, $20