In memoriam Bruce Baillie

Mass for the Dakota Sioux Bruce Baillie. USA, 1964, 16mm, bw, 20 min.
Quixote Bruce Baillie. USA, 1965-68, 16mm, color and bw, 43 min.
 
Bruce Baillie, who died on April 10 of this year, was the pioneer of "Western American Experimental Film" and the key figure of the pioneering avant-garde awakening in the San Francisco Bay Area in the Sixties. In memoriam, we are screening two of this underground poet's major works: Mass for the Dakota Sioux is a picture-sound poem as a requiem for a Native American culture annihilated by "civilized" America (as an outsider, Baillie naturally identifies with the Sioux and orchestrates the Gregorian chants on the soundtrack like an indictment of the world of white conquerors). Quixote is one of the culminating points of his work: a year-long journey across the land of progress and conquest. With stunning montages, dissolves, and multiple exposures, the film becomes a dense portrait of the "mental as well as physical landscape of the United States" (Baillie) in the Vietnam era. (C.H.)
 
A joint presentation of the Austrian Film Museum and sixpackfilm