Craig Baldwin Day

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'Craig Baldwin considers his work “underground” rather than “experimental” or “avant-garde”. Whereas the avant-garde is primarily concerned with formal exercise, and “experimental” implies some experiment (i.e. that something new is being tried for the purpose of determining whether of not it can expand the limits of cinematic language), “underground” would encompass not only formal plasticity but a political dimension; that of an oppositional subculture.

'As such, Craig Baldwin’s films have formal concerns as well as some kind of political commentary, usually concerning the exploitation of countries and people under imperialism, capitalist or otherwise. Even when he is inventing the oppression (as in the alien presence of Tribulation 99 [1991]) it is either a metaphor for a real-world situation or it is combined with verifiable history. The aliens of Tribulation 99 may come from the destroyed planet Quetzalcoatl, for example, but they are apparently working with Kissinger to subject local populations in Central America. The science fiction and the fact are intertwined.

'Baldwin’s work is most easily characterised by his use of recontextualised film elements, primarily drawn from his vast library of what Rick Prelinger, his fellow archivist and collector, calls “ephemeral films” – educational and industrial films chiefly made in the period between 1945 and 1975. These, along with a healthy dose of science fiction and period dramas, make the pool from which Baldwin draws. As libraries and schools began to renovate their A/V departments in the 1980s and 1990s, an avalanche of outdated materials became available, and the creative possibilities seemed obvious to the young director.

'Craig Baldwin was born in Oakland, California, in 1952. He began making Super-8 movies when he was a teenager – the kind of skit-oriented parody films involving friends and neighbours. He was drawn into the practice of collage rather naively; he was interested in cheap and readily available Super-8 dubs of Hollywood B-movies that were for sale in the ’60s and ’70s. From these he would assemble compilations, mixing and matching scenes from various productions to create new stories. He made them for his own enjoyment, but it became the basis for his process in subsequent years.

'To make his first film, Stolen Movie (1976), the 24 year-old Baldwin would run into movie theatres with his super-8 camera and shoot what he could off the screen, pre-dating the current practice of bootlegging feature films with camcorders. This was as much performance art/action as it was any kind of film document, and the piece, though perhaps extant, isn’t in circulation like the rest of Baldwin’s work. The director himself describes it as a kind of prank – interesting for the implications and the direction of his development more so than as a film in and of itself.

'Baldwin’s critique of power and its abuses is certainly a remarkable aspect of his films. Yet equally remarkable is the fact that he chooses to present those ideas through the textures of film. He could write essays or run for public office if he were purely motivated by political change. Instead, he chooses film, in all its scratched and dirty glory, and he does so in an age when most of his contemporaries are embracing digital technology. It is not the conservative drive of a purist that draws him to celluloid, but rather a love for the medium that first inspired him, imperfections and all.'-- Senses of Cinema



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Stills

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Further

Craig Baldwin @ Other Cinema
Craig Baldwin @ IMDb
'From Junk to Funk to Punk to Link' by Craig Baldwin
Video: 2 exclusive clips @ The Wire
'Masochism of the Margins: An Interview with Craig Baldwin'
'Channel Zero: Craig Baldwin'
'FLIX REMIX: THE UNDERGROUND CINEMA OF CRAIG BALDWIN'
'Leftovers / CA Redemption Value: Craig Baldwin's Found-Footage Films'
'Cinemad podcast #10: Craig Baldwin
'Craig Baldwin: Archive Fever'
'Film Coctail'
'75 Reasons to Live: Craig Baldwin on Wallace Berman'
'Found Footage Film as Discursive Metahistory: Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99'
'Mock Up and Mu Unlocks and Mocks the Mysteries of Scientology'
'No Copyright? Sonic Outlaws Director Craig Baldwin'
'Collage Maestro Craig Baldwin'
'Going Ballistic: Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up on Mu'



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Lecture: Society of Spectacle
'Craig Baldwin is an experimental filmmaker who uses “found” footage as well as images from the mass media to undermine and transform the traditional documentary, infusing it with the energy of high-speed montage and a provocative commentary on subjects that range from intellectual property rights to consumerism. Baldwin believes "there can be joy in the discovery of unexpected meanings in collage and recombinatory forms. There can be pride in the exercise of ingenuity and resourcefulness in the face of zero budgets through improvisation and re-use of tools and materials, at hand or in the dumpster, rather than the mindless consumption of the next (expensive) gadget." He is currently a professor at the University of California at Davis. This lecture took place on March 29, 2012 as part of the University of Michigan School of Art & Design's Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.'-- UM Stamps School of Art & Design






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Extras


Craig Baldwin: Appropriating, Scratching and Decoding


Craig Baldwin: Dystopian Outcomes of Media Revolutions Past


AV Festival 10: Recycled Film Symposium: Craig Baldwin



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Interview
from desistfilm

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Your work shows an impertinence and rebellion that very few others have shown in their movies, How do you think this attitude has changed your way of using found footage, or collage as a technique, resource or language from your first works to your recent works with respect to this spirit?

Craig Baldwin: My first films were produced out of the punk movement, which is itself an impertinent and rebellious subculture. Hopefully that attitude has prevailed through these following three decades. Working with found footage itself is a sort of rebellion, of course, because it is an unorthodox way of producing a movie. Making movies out of the trash that I found in dumpsters was a solution to my impoverished situation in the beginning, but I became more comfortable with the technique even after my financial situation improved a bit. Now there are plenty of “Appropiation” artists who use previously-made imagery and audio, not because of poverty, but because of the semantic complexity, because of the ways that the layers of production and re-production complicate and enrich the filmic language; I do so appreciate the critical historical distance it gives me. At first I called my method “Cinema Povera” in an homage to the Italian “Arte Povera” movement. I later shot more of my own footage, and cut it in with the found footage, and so the style was broadened, from what could be called “found-footage collage” to what I now call a “collage- or compilation-narrative”.

Counterculture has almost become a hackneyed word. You even mentioned that it had been assimilated by the established order of “the arts” How does your work respond before this need for irreverence and political response in these times, especially in a United States governed by the media and social networks.

CB: It is certainly true that alternative or opposing social forces are constantly threatened by co-optation and assimilation in this culture which ravenously consumes itself. There is so much need for production and yet so few “original” creative/critical ideas, that corporate producers–as well as academics-–are constantly drawing from the underground, or the margins. We call our project “Other Cinema”; we point to the periphery, to the outside, at a time when everything is becoming so consolidated. Media-cultural networks, devices, and practices of the mainstream political and commercial world manage to produce the illusion of consensus…yet, in fact, there is no center. It is a “paper tiger”, as Mao once said. More people, especially artists, should point at that sham which stands for “consensus reality” and call it for what it is, which is a shell, a superficial screen of appearances and assumptions, as suggested by Guy Debord in his Society of the Spectacle.

So many artists are concerned with making “beautiful” things–and I don’t put them down for that–but other artists, activists, and minority sub-cultures can be doing research and developing modes of negating the lies and suggesting progressive solutions to the problems of everyday life, both local and global. Not only the commercial world, but also the academy, and the Art world itself, try to “recuperate” and co-opt many of these alternative gestures, and so it is difficult to stay out of the vortex that draws Difference and Otherness into the black hole of their illusion.

I have tried to move away from idealistic ideas of “Beauty”, and towards understanding informed, dialectical critique as a creative process itself…not so much the production of aesthetic objects (read: commodities) but towards a generous engagement with real historical process. This contemporary impulse might explain the mobilization of so many artists to documentary films recently.

The Spanish Eugeni Bonet prefers to speak of found footage as “dismantling of films”, in relation to the original montage of material that has been found. This idea of “dismantling” seems to fit better with your work’s profile. What do you think about this?

CB: Yes, I am familiar with Bonet’s essay and I applaud any scholarly thinking around found-footage filmmaking. But my films are way too heterogeneous, too multiplicitous to fall under the rubric of “desmontaje”, because the trace of the original source is so fragmentary. Joseph Cornell, a mid-century American artist, used to keep large reels of found material largely intact, and just removed or added a few shots to the largely uncompromised original. But in my case, it’s even rare to have two or three shots from the same movie adjacent to each other. So what one sees is not so much the shape of the source, but of a “sample” of it, though that is enough to conjure up a sense of its position and resonance in film history.

I sometimes talk about my films in terms of The Analytic and The Synthetic. Perhaps Bonet-–now I’m wondering if he’s a critic or a maker himself?–-is stressing The Analytic. Because my films are so busy with editing–-both picture and sound–-my production focus has been more on The Synthetic, that is, more on the organization of a montage that holds together across the cuts…I’m at pains to keep it all glued together.

In your works there is a common theme, to denude types of power relations (the communications in Spectres of the Spectrum, the rights of the author in Sonic Outlaws, for example). How have you continue this critical vein, now as a cinematographer or curator?

CB: I appreciate your insightful reading of the critical impulse behind Spectres and Sonic, and in fact all of my other works. Frankly, it would be hard for me to get involved with a project unless it was some sort of critique of established power relations, be they governmental, corporate, religious, and especially military. I hope it’s true that the same–well, “negative”–perspective succeeds in shaping our weekly screenings. Though there are very many “pretty”, visually attractive films in circulation, increasingly made by designers who now flood the art schools, our instinct and apocalyptic fear (ha!) draws us towards those works which manage to take a position, a point of view, and perhaps suggest an argument about historical and/or contemporary social reality.

Increasingly, my own work has moved away from the rather facile binary morality of “good” (colonial subjects) vs. “bad” (US military and Intelligence) towards a hopefully more nuanced exploration of creative thinking around structural problems–as well as “historiography” itself–which may be suggested by models taken from sub-cultural ethnography, art-making, and literature…which is why my movies are so packed with language!

My new project is a cinematic mounting of the critique of The Spectacle, advanced by both the philosophical aphorisms of the Situationists and the “cut-up” techniques of the Beats. Rather than situate an anti-imperialist collage in the remote “failed states” of the developing world, I have moved my focus back home–-to a deconstruction of the commodity culture of bourgeois society.

What future do you see for this “dismantling” film, for this culture of bricolage, or of jamming, especially considering the paths that it has taken in the last ten years?

CB: Now with the proliferation of copying and post-production devices, many kinds of “dismantling” will certainly arise, for many reasons that I can’t possibly know. Of course these can be disavowed as “nerdish” exercises of short-sighted pop-cult aficionados, who remain captivated by the most trivial aspects of celebrity culture and mass media. Some may call themselves pranksters, even hackers, but I suppose to really “dismantle,” one should have a larger view of culture’s role in Neo-Liberalism’s global reach. I’m talking about doing more actual research, even naming names, and the contemporary art world’s enlightened move towards documentary, a valorization of knowledge, and even social intervention. This new “documentary” activity will hopefully include contributions from engaged citizens, non-academics, even techno-peasants, and perhaps this sentiment against the Spectacular take-over of our lives will naturally produce a lush underground garden of ingenious works by cinema-povera practitioners like myself.



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6 of Craig Baldwin's 8 films

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Wild Gunman(1974)
'Mobilizing wildly diverse found-footage fragments, obsessive optical printing and a dense "musique concrete" soundtrack, a maniac montage of pop-cultural amusements, cowboy iconography and advertising imagery is re-contextualized within the contemporary geopolitical crisis in this scathing critique of U.S. cultural and political imperialism.'-- fandor



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RocketKitKongoKit(1986)
'This kaleidoscopic, amphetamine-paced tour de force uses a barrage of found-footage images and rapid-fire narration to trace a history of Zaire since its independence in 1960. The CIA, German munitions manufacturers and American popular culture are all indicted in this comic critique of neo-colonialism. Centering on President Mobutu's lease of 1/0 of the country's total land area to a West German rocket firm, the film explores both the explicit and implicit historical contradictions that this astonishing arrangement poses and is posed by. With sources of imagery ranging from corporate advertising through 1950s instructional films to Tarzan flicks and musical components oscillating between aboriginal sounds to contemporary electronic compositions, a critical irony is established between the several voice-over discourses and an energetic montage of "found" visuals. Self-reflexively ordered like a plastic model kit, the film perhaps proposes another, more imaginative model of historiography.'-- collaged



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Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America(1991)
'Upon its release in 1991, Tribulation 99 became an instant counter-culture classic. Craig Baldwin's "pseudo-pseudo-documentary" presents a factual chronicle of US intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory, combining covert action, environmental catastrophe, space aliens, cattle mutilations, killer bees, religious prophecy, doomsday diatribes, and just about every other crackpot theory broadcast through the dentures of the modern paranoiac. A delirious vortex of hard truths, deadpan irony, and archival mash-ups—industrials, graphs, cartoons, movies from Hollywood B to Mexican Z—Tribulation 99 constructs a truly perverse vision of American imperialism.'-- Other Cinema



the entire film



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Sonic Outlaws(1995)
'By their own reckoning, members of the Bay Area recording and performance group Negativland got themselves into trouble by having too much fun. Their prank began with a pirated audiotape of Casey Kasem, the normally boosterish-sounding disk jockey and radio personality, as he cursed a blue streak while trying to record a spot about the band U2. Sensing opportunity at hand, Negativland enthusiastically mixed these mutterings with samples from a U2 song, then put out a 1991 single on the SST label with a picture of the U-2 spy plane on its cover. "We didn't know how prophetic it was that the plane was shot down," one member of Negativland says now."Sonic Outlaws, a fragmented, gleefully anarchic documentary by Craig Baldwin, approaches this incident from several directions. Some of the film is about the legal nightmare that ensued from Negativland's little joke. In a highly publicized case, U2's label, Island Records, charged Negativland with copyright and trademark infringement for appropriating the letter U and the number 2, even though U2 had in turn borrowed its name from the Central Intelligence Agency. SST then dropped Negativland, suppressed the record and demanded that the group pay legal fees. Trying to remain solvent, Negativland sent out a barrage of letters and legal documents that are now collected in "Fair Use", an exhaustive, weirdly fascinating scrapbook about the case. Sonic Outlaws covers some of the same territory while also expanding upon the ideas behind Negativland's guerilla recording tactics. Guerilla is indeed the word, since these and other appropriation artists see themselves as engaged in real warfare, inundated by the commercial airwaves, infuriated by the propaganda content of much of what they hear and see, these artists strike back by rearranging contexts as irreverently as possible. Their technological capabilities are awesome enough to mean no sound or image is tamper-proof today.'-- collaged



part 1


part 2


part 3


part 4


part 5


part 6


part 7



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Spectres of the Spectrum(1999)
'Unlike mainstream agitprop auteurs whose labored work must be endured as part of the ritual of leftist credibility, Craig Baldwin's film's are dizzyingly ambitious collages that both attack and engage. His 2003 feature Spectres of the Spectrum is typical in its complex skewering of the American mindset that cloaks its invisible wars, clandestine nuclear programs, and other nefarious activities behind the bland reassurances of postwar pop culture – most especially 1950s educational TV shows like Science in Action and kitschy biopics of science-heroes like Ben Franklin, Marconi, Edison, Roentgen, Samuel Morse, and others. As much a product of editing as of directing, Spectres of the Spectrum is one of the most exciting and challenging pieces of pure cinema in the past few years. In an interview with critic Alvin Lu, Baldwin says, "I hate to describe myself as a moralist, but there really is this drive behind the film, not only to make something that's beautiful-slash-ugly, but also to raise consciousness. That's my missionary zeal."'-- brightlightsfilm.com



Trailer


@ the 'Spectres of the Spectrum' world premiere, San Francisco



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Mock Up on Mu(2008)
'A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Craig Baldwin's Mock Up On Mu cobbles together a feature-length "collage-narrative" based on (mostly) true stories of California's post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles. Pulp-serial snippets, industrial-film imagery, and B- (and Z-) fiction clips are intercut with newly shot live-action material, powering a playful, allegorical trajectory through the now-mythic occult matrix of Jack Parsons (Crowleyite founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab), L.Ron Hubbard (sci-fi author turned cult-leader), and Marjorie Cameron (bohemian artist and "mother of the New Age movement"). Their intertwined tales spin out into a speculative farce on the militarization of space, and the corporate take-over of spiritual fulfillment and leisure-time.'-- Spectacle Theater



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*

p.s. Hey. ** Kier, Hi, K. Sometimes it seems that way, ha ha. Thanks about 'MLT'. Awesomeness supreme about the happy visit with the wise sounding curator. 'Unshelling and shelling again': huh. I wonder what that means exactly, do you know? Perfect on the corrected timing too. Yeah, sweetness all around. And, yeah, his being taken with work by you that isn't your favorite work by you is very interesting, no? A confidence expander hopefully. Cool, it sounds like the visit couldn't have gone better. Congrats, maestro! Thanks for explaining that about the eating disorder. Good! My day ... Zac and I met with Christophe Honore, our film's ass. producer and mentor, for a pep talk and wisdom exchange, and that was great and really needed. Then we went to the place where we're renting the sound/light equipment for the shoot to check out some things. Then we walked around and ate burritos. Then we met with one of the five performers who are playing a technically sort of minor but key role in the upcoming scene. Then Zac and I went separate ways and did different late minute stuff for the film. I looked for padding for the insides of the Krampus costumes that two of the performers will wear to bulk the costumes up and protect them during this moment when they get badly beaten up. No luck, but we'll find that. And other film stuff. Then I had a really nice coffee with one of this blog's d.l.s, Etc etc etc, who's visiting Paris. That was really cool. Then I came home and did more film prep work and crashed. That was it, I think. Today we start rehearsals and go into high gear. Should be interesting. Wow, more seemingly really great news about the school problem being solved! Well, yeah, that makes sense. It can be like that in the States with art schools too. Oh, I'm sure they'll accept you, if that's true, You might even get a bidding war for your attendance. That's so, so great! All this good news is so very, very heartening, my pal! And, of course, how was Thursday on your end? ** Tomkendall, Howdy, Tom. Oh, shit, about your neck. Tricky things, necks, so treat it gingerly, as I'm very sure I don't need to tell you. Cool re: the novel work. Yeah, I'd love to read it, but, yeah, it would take me quite a while, probably, 'cos my immediate future is warped and swamped, but, yeah, I would really like to! Feel better! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. No, I'm not using music as an inspiration for this novel, or not consciously. It's a very un-novel like novel, and I'm trying to keep it that way, and I'm trying to break with some of my construction-related habits for that reason. When it gets into refining/editing, I might pull in some music influence if I need to. The only deliberate influence I'm using right is fairytales, or their form and strength and purpose. Yeah, I'm really curious about that latest doll's supposedly ultra-realistic skin development. That's super interesting. And the fantasy thing you talked about is a real interest for me too, mostly because I can't quite get my imagination around 'the sex doll'. The sex doll has never interested me much at all, and making the post was sort of a way of trying to find my way into getting the way that a usage of such a thing could become adequate on some level. Your close attention to the post, to posts here in general, is so heartening and means really a lot, man, and I so appreciate that and getting to read your thoughts since my thoughts about the posts and why I made them and etc. can feel weirdly lonely. A fleshlight in your novel, or so far, very curious! So, yeah, thank you! ** David Ehrenstein, Good morning, Mr. E. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. I know, isn't it? Great: that idea for a story. And so, so lucky you to have October in Tokyo. I'm missing Tokyo a lot right now and wanting to plan a trip back there. I'm so happy that 'The Plum ... ' is being republished! You know I love that book! I prize my copy. Wonderful. Let me do an announcement/birth post for it here, if you don't mind. Unless that will making your exploding in November even more of a possibility because we definitely don't want that. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Yes, I've been wanting to see that documentary you mentioned too. It wasn't online as of a few days ago when I made the post. I looked for it, as you can imagine. That older 'Guys and Doll's documentary I posted is quite interesting. I haven't seen the latest Breillat, no. I've heard a lot of really positive things about it, and I will definitely see it. I think I missed its theater run. So, you weren't too excited about it? ** Keaton, Hi, K. I think I maybe remember you mentioning at some point that you sold sex dolls? I don't know why, but whenever I see a Fleshlight, I think of that movie 'Alien'. How's it, bud? ** Hyemin Kim, Hi, Hyemin. I'm excited about 'Kindertotenlieder' playing in NYC. It's my very favorite of the pieces I've made with Gisele, as you may know. Yes, I totally understood about the need to stay one-on-one with your work. I get like that a lot too. Well, maybe Ashbery has talked about it but I haven't found any interviews where he did. It seems like there must be one or more that's not online since I think he must always do interviews whenever a new book of his comes out. Yeah, like I said to Thomas, I have no inherent interest in the sex doll as a thing or an idea, which was why I did the post: to see if I could overcome that ennui. Not sure if I have or not, though. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Right, I liked that 'Guys and Dolls' doc too. I hadn't watched it until I found it while making the post. I'd forgotten that Sturtevant did that work with blow up dolls! Shit, how could I have spaced on that? That would have so contributed to the post. ** Okay. Not so very long ago, Chilly Jay Chill sort of suggested that I do a Craig Baldwin post, and it was a great idea, and so there it is. If you don't know Baldwin's work, it's very worth checking out. See you tomorrow.