Bruce Baillie

The first film we watched by Bruce Baillie was To Parcifal. This film started out with very calm images that almost looked like they were tinted blue. We saw images of the ocean and shots that were taken from a boat. Then, suddenly, there was a flash of unsettling red. It was a very quick cut, but it was enough to throw off any presumptions you were able to muster up until that point. Then it continued with calm blue seas until the camera cut again to dozens of fish being gutted by fishermen on the boat. It was this first impression that really made me appreciate To Parcifal. It was surprising to see how easily it was for Baillie to make me feel unsettled, almost disturbed, with such a short flash of red. It also held a powerful message that could be deciphered if looked at closely. After the scene on the boat, the film went on to show a calm forest which was interrupted by a train in the same way the calm sea was interrupted by the dead fish. Almost as if to show how something so peaceful and beautiful can be destroyed by man. Very effective filmmaking.

The second film we watched was Castro Street, which was another very well made film. It had many moving images of trains overlapped on top of one another. This use of double exposure was very impressive, because effectively double exposing film is no easy task. Baillie did a wonderful job of making several different images flow smoothly with each other. The way he emphasized the mechanics of the train reminded me of Ballet Mechanique, which also emphasized mechanical parts. Another part of Castro Street that stuck out in my mind was the use of the color red. He inter-spliced certain shots with shots of a smokestack tinted red. The red tint went against the natural blue color scheme the rest of the film followed, and therefore made for a very powerful image. Overall, it was a very well filmed and edited piece.