About
Bruce Baillie was one of the founders of the San Francisco avant-garde film movement. Born in South Dakota and educated at the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Berkeley, and the London School of Film Technique, he began making film in 1961 with On Sundays and The Gymnasts. With Chick Strand he founded Canyon Cinema, the important West Coast film distribution and exhibition collective. Baillie's innovative films, including Mass for the Dakota Sioux and Castro Street, are renowned for their beauty and visual richness, their acute lyrical sensibility, and their invocation of myth in dealing with the commonplace world. His works are in the Library of Congress collection and are considered national treasures.
Bruce Baillie appeared on Screening Room in April 1973 to screen and discuss the films:
• On Sundays (excerpt, 11:40)
• The Gymnasts (excerpt, 6:45)
• To Parsifal (full film, 15:12)
• Tung (full film, 4:32)
• Castro Street (full film, 9:54)
Screening Room was a Boston television series that ran for almost ten years from 1972-1981. It offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. The series was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner (Dead Birds, Forest of Bliss). Nearly 100 programs were produced during the years Screening Room was broadcast. Twenty seven episodes have been edited for release in 3 categories: Animation, Documentary, and Experimental Film.
Films in the Experimental series