The Bodhisattva of Cinema: Bruce Baillie (1931–2020)

Since 1970s, the Walker has maintained a close relationship with Bruce Baillie and his films. He’s been a part of 20 solo and group screenings, eight of his films are in the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection, and his work was most recently included in the 2013 exhibition The Renegades: American Avant-Garde Film, 1960–1973. A touring film program of this exhibition visited Santiago, Chile in 2018. In commemoration of Baillie’s passing April 10 at age 88, Michael Walsh, the Walker’s Assistant Curator/Archivist of Moving Image, pays respect to Baillie’s far-reaching influence and shares his memories of meeting Baillie while living in San Francisco in the 1990s.

Between 1960 and 1971, Bruce Baillie made more than 25 films. In any decade, for any filmmaker, that is an astounding number. Bruce made many long-form films, but most of his films were short. One of his most well-known works, All My Life (1966) is only three minutes in length, a simple one-take film. It’s a slow pan of a Northern California coastal fence, the wild roses clinging comfortably to the weathered fence and the California blue sky above. The wind, blowing the tall burnt summer grass in quiet swirls, translates the frames of film, not in a hurry to go anywhere fast. The soundtrack is Ella Fitzgerald singing “All My Life” with Teddy Wilson’s Orchestra. If there is ever a simpler film to translate an unassuming moment in time, I have yet to see it. As Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times in 2016 about All My Life, “It’s one of the most perfect films I’ve ever seen.” Say no more.

Another of his perfect films is Castro Street (1966), a film that helped define the lyricism of his unique style of using his hand to cover portions of the lens for the use of wipes or for multiple exposures. This enables a more spontaneous filming experience when rewinding the camera for double and triple exposures. Sheryl Mousley, Senior Curator of Moving Image at the Walker from 1998 to 2020, wrote in 2001 about Castro Street, “Before new technologies colonized our lives, industry was the necessary evil. Railroad tracks ripped through farmlands, and train yards created pervasive urban clutter, filling lives with mechanical interruptions. Bruce Baillie’s Castro Street is intended to wrest human consciousness from such sights and sounds.”

During those same early years in the Bay Area, Bruce and fellow filmmaker Chick Strand started Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque. There were no venues on the West Coast in the early 1960s to screen this emerging form of new cinema, so Bruce and Chick hung up a sheet one legendary night in Canyon, California in 1961 and began to screen films for their neighbors and friends. Shortly after, they realized they needed to make these films available for distribution. They never set out to change the direction of cinema; they just saw a need, and they helped fill it. Little did they know they helped change the course of how we look at film.

In search for that space between reality and consciousness, Bruce was in constant movement, chasing the light, trekking up and down the West Coast searching for answers in nature and in people. His films contain so much soul. It might have had something to do with his upbringing in South Dakota. Or the water he drank on road trips as a young man. His service in the Navy during the Korean war. All that and more set him up for the perfect marriage of his arrival to San Francisco during this fruitful period. The poetry, the early years of Buddhism arriving in the Bay Area, the breath of the untapped city—all of it was just perfect timing for the big-hearted Bruce Baillie and his 16mm Bolex camera.

During his most productive years, Bruce was helping to define and shape the Bay Area film scene. With the other notable Bruce (Conner) working in San Francisco during these years, the Bruces (and several other artists not named Bruce) were making their historic marks. Many of the artists working in San Francisco expressed humor and Buddhist philosophy in their work, often laughing at themselves and others along the way. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, filmmakers during this same time were creating equally as brilliant work, just more structuralist and pragmatic in style.

Finding the meaning to the wanderings of his soulful eye in the editing room, Bruce was a master editor, connecting the dots to his intuitive shooting style. The double and triple exposures, the out of focus shots, the out the window handheld shots of motorcycles crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, all of it would end up in a finished film that would drift across your eyes as the visual poetry of Bruce’s interpretation of his space between reality and his unconscious. A form of filmmaking that has been emulated by countless makers since.

Bruce appeared in Minneapolis on many occasions throughout his life, coming to the Walker, to Film in the Cities in the 1980s, and also to see long time friends including the beloved champion of experimental film, Sally Dixon. Mousley, who served as director of education at Film in the Cities before coming to the Walker, remembers him fondly, “I met Bruce Baillie when he came to the Twin Cities in the late 1970s. I loved showing the Baillie films that were part of the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection, happily acquired new titles from him, and installed Castro Street in the Renegades exhibition in 2012. I always admired how his work in film maintained playfulness with the art form. It was also his foresight, seeing experimental film as essential, that lead to the formation of Canyon Cinema. We all benefitted from this access to the work of the filmmakers who were truly renegades of their time.”

As a maker who was greatly influenced by Baillie, I moved to San Francisco to be closer to the rich cinematic history. Finding a job at Canyon Cinema in the later 1990s was as close as one could get. Bruce would often call and say, “It’s Dr. Bish, President of the Board, how goes the battle?” He would end every phone conversation by expressing his gratitude for helping keep experimental filmmaking alive. I would tell him: “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you so thank you, sir!” I would later have the pleasure of spending time with him in person.

I would sit in silence listening to his stories of art and life. He spoke often about the importance of the proper way to cook oatmeal. He felt that the best way to start any day is a good bowl of oatmeal. I’d witness the glow in his eyes when he watched his children run across the room or when his wife, Lorie, delivered him a hot cup of tea. He seemed to always be aware and thankful of the present moment. If there was ever a Bodhisattva of cinema, it was Bruce Baillie.