Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live!
INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media & SF Cinematheque
Edited by Brett Kashmere and Steve Polta
https://incite-online.net/baldwin.html
June 3, 2023

CRAIG BALDWIN: AVANT TO LIVE!

To order: www.sfcinematheque.org/shop/craig-baldwin-avant-to-live-standard/

Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! documents the life and work of acclaimed filmmaker and curator Craig Baldwin (b. Oakland CA, 1952), an inspiring and influential figure in contemporary media arts. Meticulously detailed, with contributions from over 50 writers, artists, illustrators, and ideologues, Avant to Live! is the first critical text to examine the artist’s films analytically as a coherent and meaningful body of work and critical artist’s statement while also examining the cultural impact of Baldwin’s Other Cinema curatorial project.

AS A FILMMAKER, Baldwin’s works represent a radical fusion of form and content. Formally, his films are constructed largely from audiovisual material appropriated from pre-existing films. In this, they represent a radical stance toward media culture as a participatory field. As an artist, Baldwin engages with mainstream media as an adversary, using its languages in ironic opposition. In this way he talks back to corporately produced media and creates inspiring, wildly imaginative works which profoundly challenge the nature of one-way media consumption.

AS A FILM CURATOR, Baldwin is known for Other Cinema, an extensive and hugely influential series of film/video programs he has personally organized in San Francisco on a schedule of 36 programs per year since the late 1980s. Like his films, Baldwin’s Other Cinema represents a radically expanded approach to film exhibition, media consumption and cultural engagement in which ephemeral forms of film history coexist alongside expanded cinema performance, underground/experimental film screenings, speculative lecture presentations, in-person artists and more.

Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! is a collaborative project of San Francisco Cinematheque and INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media, representing INCITE #9-10-11.

Editors: Brett Kashmere and Steve Polta
Project Archivists: Courtney Fellion and and Megan Needels
Designer: Vivian Sming, Sming Sming Books

Contributors: Luisela Alvaray, Craig Baldwin, Irene Borger, Bryan Boyce, Stephen Broomer, Bill Brown, Anthony Buchanan, Joanna Byrne, Kristin Cato, Chris Chang, David Cox, Bill Daniel, Joan d’Arc, Manohla Dargis, Tom Day, Jesse Drew, Adam Dziesinski, Bradley Eros, Gerry Fialka, Adrianne Finelli, Kelly Gallagher, Max Goldberg, Sam Green, Molly Hankwitz, Joshua Leon Harper, Mike Hoolboom, Alex Johnston, Brett Kashmere, John Klacsmann, Caroline Koebel, Liz Kotz, Jesse Lerner, Chip Lord, Patrick Macias, Scott MacKenzie, Jesse Malmed, Dolissa Medina, Peggy Nelson, Steve Polta, Rick Prelinger, Vanessa Renwick, Jeremy Rourke, Catherine Russell, Lynne Sachs, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, Keivan Khademi Shamami, Jeffrey Skoller, Soda_Jerk, Valerie Soe, Kathleen Tyner, Federico Windhausen, Michael Zryd

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Select images from the book:

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Excerpt from Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! of correspondences from Craig Baldwin to Lynne Sachs (1996-2019)

Blissfully Out of Context:
A Collection of Letters from Craig Baldwin
1996–2019

Lynne Sachs

I met Craig Baldwin in 1986, soon after I moved to San Francisco. I was 25 years old and reeling from watching so many experimental movies during a thriving, nourishing period in the history of alternative, underground moviemaking in the Bay Area. Meeting Craig and falling into the vortex of his Other Cinema at Artists’ Television Access transformed everything I knew about images, from making them to editing them to projecting them. Craig and I quickly became ciné-compatriots. When I moved to New York City ten years later, our bond was tight enough to support a quarter-century of epistolary exchanges. Thus, my file cabinet drawer of letters and printed e-missives from Craig has become a repository of material, a document

of both our lives and our shared engagement with the kindred spirits of a rag-tag bi-coastal community of people who cook, bake, and devour the food of cinema. Here I share with you a smattering of Craig’s side of our correspondence. I have chosen not to include my own letters, but instead have added some personal annotations (in italics). For the sake of clarity and space, the editors and I have made some minor revisions to Craig’s writing; in general, however, all creative spellings and expressions by Craig are reproduced as composed.

1996

Hello my darling,

Happy? New year and all that. I’m just getting over a cold and enjoying that wonderful rough euphoria when you start to feel like a human being again. Oh yeah, being a human being can actually be fun. Use my so-called brain and move my body around. Yes, I can actually master my (at least immediate) environment. And now I’m ready to have sex! Might as well realize my full potential so to speak. Anyway, let’s take this transient optimism as the keynote to ‘96. Might as well. Actually, our Fall ‘95 was our most successful yet, an average of 56 paying customers per show. Lynne, bubala, can I show your magic lantern slides again for the April 27 show on the ecstasy of projection? I can only afford to pay for shipping though. It may be that someone can deliver by hand? I was just listening to your voice on Louise Bourque’s “Experimental Film” interview tape. Ann Arbor was awesome. Flying to Taos Fest in two weeks.

Craig

1997

Lynne (y) darling,

Thanks so much for the photo of [your daughter] Noa. I hope I live long enough and stay in your steady, strategic-arc, long-term, like, permanent world long enough to sooner or later know your children as they become adults. I’ll play the crazy uncle. If I ever did leave the world of the sensible, it would be out of nervous exhaustion from the fuss and fret over my film’s post-production. I keep thinking of – and feeling like – that photo of Artaud in Rodez. That’s why, little sister, I’m begging you for your help with the Cumberland Street studio. I’ll pay you whatever you want, I’ll leave it clean, I’ll give you credit, please Ms. Sachs, tell me that there’s hope for the sane. Uncle Craig

In the mid-1990s, I shared a house in the Mission District of San Francisco with my sister Dana Sachs. Craig rented a basement room from us for several years to use as his studio while he was editing Spectres of the Spectrum (1999) with Bill Daniel and others.

Dear Lynne,

Well, I really must say that things are at their very lowest out here. My only saving grace is… the studio where I can work late into the night, keeping busy so as not to be too mentally/emotionally overwhelmed by all the bad shit. My shoulder aches as I write this. I have truly suffered a major life-changing injury and I

pray that I’ll be able to recover. I’ll start some of the rehabilitation within two weeks, after the screw comes out. It took this physical trauma to completely and violently expunge any former expectations about any assumed identity or life. I could just as easily join a cult or go on Prozac… probably end up in Santa Cruz, where my father is fading fast.

But even accustomed to life at the bottom circle of hell, I was not prepared for the shock of seeing Eva Pierrakos at Mt. Zion Hospital… I’ve got to give her credit for her feisty electric-blue hair color, but seeing her skull coming through her skin in that 5th floor room, being fed by Samoan and Russian attendants – neither
of whom knew much about her condition – made for a kind of ghastly surrender that my nervous system can hardly bear. She was apparently uncomfortable,
but there’s no way she can be understood, beyond speech. I moved her this way, then I moved her that way, then back again. Then just gave up. Then she starts to cry. Absolutely without hope. I say give her drugs until she dies peacefully… The Other Cinema shows are consistently strong and well-attended, really those shows are my form of church. Looks like I’m doing a program for Visible Evidence at San Francisco State University that Bill Nichols is organizing this summer and maybe to Austria in September with some “Dead Media” programs.

All my love to Mark and the kids, Craig

Howdy,

Here’s the new calendar and thanks to both of you for being part of it. I’m settling into my groove at UC Berkeley, still hustling “Sonic Outlaws” across the globe, and now starting a sci-fi ‘time radio’ project based on old science-class kinescopes. Craig

Lynne-y,

Here are some OC calendars. I hope you don’t mind that we shortened your title to “Lilith.” The studio is absolutely wonderful. I love it and I could make some good movies in it – I think – if conditions were just a little different. The truth of the matter is despite your fabulously generous offer of studio access, the editing is going achingly slowly. As I might have told you, Bill drove his flatbed all the

way out from Texas to discover that it was fried. We’ve spent way too much time and money on long-distance calls for schematics for not only Bill’s but also your flatbed, with no success. We have managed to get yours going, but it does slip out of sync. It’s taken almost 14 days for Bill to get a place for a decent night’s sleep… It’s pouring rain, my studio is flooded with two inches of water, and this must certainly mark the low point in the whole production process. I thank you and a small circle of friends for sticking with me when it seems there’s hardly any energy left to carry on. More money keeps getting poured into the bottomless hole and over time as I look at the workprint it seems more and more a ludicrous idea to try to pull it off, especially as a feature… the only light of hope on the horizon is the incipient Other Cinema season. I pray for strength. Craig

Dear Lynne-y darling,

Vicky Funari’s “Paulina” was the hit of the Film Arts Foundation Festival. And now it’s going to Sundance! A wonderful, brilliant, excellent, exquisite film – both Mexican and Californian, both film and video, both doc and narrative – the kind of film that makes me proud to be a San Franciscan. Must see! Still no word from _________. Bury myself in work. Craig

1998

Lynne-y,

I promise to make a good film. Maybe there’s some good karma hanging around the studio from your early days of editing “Lilith.” Speaking of which, send all your picture poop and preview dub now. Don’t delay, don’t hedge, don’t fudge, just do it, as the capitalists say. I need all the help I can get in putting the calendar together and we both know that you’re already slotted in so follow thru, sis. Here’s some miscellaneous articles. I am trying to clear up all the papers on my floor. One of these days, I will slip on the glossy articles. We finished our most successful Other Cinema season ever. Average attendance 65! I’m supposed to be recording my voice-overs. Have to hire Steve Polta to get me through the back- log of pick-ups. He is a good man. My nerves are shot. Not enough sex. But I’m lucky to be alive, I tell myself. Just returned from my Dad’s – he’s ailing – having angina attacks while we sit there watching the football game together!! And Eva, sorry to be the one to tell you, but sometimes I suspect that 1998 will be her last year. The disease has wasted her. I was very surprised to hear her half-legible voice on my machine yesterday. We’ll see “Boogie Nights” together tomorrow. Wheels are in motion. Craig

Lynne, Howdy, dear heart. Big May Day Weekend. Rallies during day, film at night. Did I tell you that I’m guest-curating an “Indelible Images” program at the San Francisco International Film Festival? Here’s my pitch. I have a coupon for 2400’ of free color processing at Bono Labs out your way. Could we somehow work a trade for continued access to the studio? It would help me so much! Craig

Sister girl… I’m off to Mexico City within 24 hours as part of a Bi-National conference on the short film. Hope it’s good for my nerves. Europe was great but stressful. Lots and lots of crazy, creative energy. Did four shows, got lost a couple of times, lost my glasses, journeyed into the Slovakian Republic and Hungary. Teaching at SFSU and Film Arts Foundation but haven’t found much time for “Specters of the Spectrum,” unfortunately. Craig

Howdy Lynne and Mark,

Hope you’re doing better than me! Actually, I am a little jazzed, owing to our successful benefit two nights ago. Probably the best Artist Television Access party ever – two bars, big crowd, live DJ, four simultaneous projections, etc., but that was just enough for one month’s back rent – still have to come with another. They’re cutting some of the dead weight from the staff, tho’, so a leaner, more Darwinian crew might pull this limping non-profit out of its nose dive yet. Bill and I will be editing by the time you get this, so maybe the film production front won’t look so hopeless either. And, of course, I am slamming together the next OC calendar. Having to go to the gym every other day for my shoulder. It’s going to be a long, slow recovery, but I do think I will get most of the use back. Still no word from _________. Lost, lost, lost, Craig

Lynne-y,

After my Pittsburgh N.A.M.A.C. show, I must have fallen into some sort of
“post” lethargy depression – didn’t manage to get any work done in the studio during November. I did catch a cold, however, and despite it, move another
500 educational films into my basement from the College of San Mateo. Now David Cox is down there analyzing them for their media archeology value. And continuing with the “Other Cinema” screenings again in spite of the rain and the so-so turnouts, but the last three shows will be strong, I guess. Then a spate of holiday engagements, which may be fun, and may be remunerative (light show jobs), but will still distract from the #1 task of finishing my script. What I want for Christmas is PEACE AND SOLITUDE so I can organize my ideas and focus on my SOS project!!! What about yours, little sister? Craig

Lynne-y,

Thanks for the break on the studio rental. The good news is that I’ve been invited to the Rotterdam Film Festival and after that the Whitney Biennial!!! Craig

Lynne,

Today the lab told me that they were having some trouble with my A/B rolls. If the print does issue forth, then I’m in Vancouver or NY by the time you read this – or maybe we’ve crossed paths in NY, and then Olympia, Virginia, Pitzer, but sometime in there, I’ll hopefully be able to clear my shit out and turn in my keys to the studio. Craig

Lynne-y darling,

Well, we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, tho’ I suspect we’ll still have some technical problems with the lab, etc. Bill and I are both A/B rolling, very slow going, and audio-mixing at same time and I might have mentioned World Premiere at Vancouver Film Festival, then closing the New York Film Festival where I might see you guys. Then back home to Film Arts Festival and I will only be able to make it because of your help. Thank you. Thank you for your support during this long, arduous process. This movie is very important. I’m very convinced of that, and unfortunately your sis’s pillow was an unintentional accidental victim of this vigorous struggle with miles of 16mm that had to be tamed!! But now we’re all getting it under control. Craig

2000

Lynne-y, again, s’wunnerful hanging with you… you are my fairy godmother without whom Spectres of the Spectrum would never have been made, so my trip out to you in the fall should be just as much your party as mine. And I do look forward to critiquing your work-in-progress. Smooches, CB

Alas, I don’t have any of the emails that Craig and I exchanged between 2003 and 2007. After racking my brain and my file cabinet in search of these correspondences, it occurred to me that these were the last five years I was using AOL. When I desperately searched my extant but feeble AOL inbox, I discovered that nothing before 2011 remains.

2008

My darling sister, I am sorry to have to tell you that my good friend John Corser, one of my best friends in my entire life, died in a freak accident about six months ago. CB

2009

hello lynne-y!

Just wanted to let you know that I got a look at your “Last Happy Day”, and it’s not only brilliant, but beautiful! (just like you)… can’t say fer sure this early, but would prolly be very interested in finding a place for that on next OC (or oneafter that). Congrats … it is my favorite Lynne Sachs film.

2010

Working very hard here… led a found-footage workshop, showed [Mock Up On] Mu, had a big symposium all day yesterday at which Rick Prelinger and me and
a bunch of other big-wigs spoke, and then saw the new Kenneth Anger film… FASCIST ART, totally!! The 9 younger brits clapped (was sold out), but I walked out. Am in the Newcastle Lib. now, before two interviews. Yes of course intend on staying with you. Let ME buy you some bottles. By the way, do you have a place to stay whilst in frisco? Mi casa es tu casa.

2011

L–believe it or not was just thinking about you last night. I saw a film so damn ‘push-pull’ discursive that it gave me nightmares.

2013

A lot going on here. I have a lot to write you, but not now, very precarious situation, wretched health, I am in agony right now but will slouch to the pharmacy in 20 mins to get some relief, but multiplying projects at same time! I am making an anti-gun short (out of ‘Bufferin’ commercial), and I made “Sight & Sound” magazine! (Tony Rayns article, with pic!). Am now crunching down the Fall OC cal… quite possibly the very last… cb

Lynne-y,

Glad you like the book… in fact I should send you more… I can’t indulge the
idea of a personal library anymore; my books are all in boxes on the floor (and
I trip over them). The situation is really pathetic… “abject” might be a more appropriate word. My health too is a total trainwreck. Maybe it is a good thing (though I really don’t think so) that OC/ATA is coming off the rails, so I would finally have the time to attend to my own failing body. Right now I can hardly hear… I went to the doctor, thinking that my nerve disease has finally risen to
the level of ears… and that there was going to be permanent damage. Can you imagine walking around with that thought in your head?… B l e a k, baby. Well
he says it’s just a bunch of wax! Gawd, I hope so, but don’t know how to fix
that. I pour this de-waxer in my ears every day. I am going to have to get, for the first time in my life, an ear “lavage”… but that is minor compared to my other problems… but no time to whine!! But at this point I can hardly stop working
for even an hour. So you finally returned to Wesleyan with your second-born, eh sis? What will be her major? (and what is Maya’s?). By the way, if you remember Gilbert Guerrero and Kathleen Quillian, from ATA crowd (and board)–they named their daughter Maya too! And now Kathleen is delivering her second kid in first week of Oct. And in third week of Oct., she is presenting Stereo Realist 3-D slides at Other Cinema!!!… On an evening with THREE kinds of 3-D!!!

mucho amor, cb

Ok, sis, by now you should be getting a little luv-gift in the mail, but anyway, I have a favor to ask of you: please be so kind as to reply with the name of your woman doctor friend, cuz I want to follow up. I need medical help. Thanks!

Craig

I am having a medicAL eMERGENCY HERe, BU I DOn’T WANT TO GO tO SF GENERAL’S eMeRGEncy ROOM… CB

L -For the short-term emergency, I was able to get in to see a GP… he took one look at my foot: Staph infection! But am taking my antibiotics now, and don’t have to go to work… thanks Lynne…

Darling! I am so happy that that bed footage is going to good use!! I still have that Jack Smith/Malanga bed stuff that I might ultimately sell for big bucks! Thank you for the connection to your doctor that we ate burrito with… the after effects from the staph infection have profoundly affected my life, perhaps permanently. Not to bring you down, but I am suffering the consequences of compromised lymph system after flesh-eating bacteria infection, see? They can’t really figure out what the prob is, and tomorrow I have to have a ($500) MRI.

It’s very discouraging, but I have so many other causes for panic in my life, I guess the health crisis takes its place among the many others. “The Panicked Life”… there’s a good book/movie title? “The Life Panic”. I could write that book, dear sister. When I see your grandmother at 102, or my own father at 98, I so immediately know that I am not going to come anywhere close to that. It will be a miracle if I get out of my 60s… but don’t grieve for any early death, sister! I want everybody to celebrate. I am declaring this loud and clear to you… Anyway, I am so happy for you and your wonderful film, Lynne. Tell us when you will next return to NorCal and we will do another show! Of course!… cb

Hello sister!

Thanks for all of your inquiries! I’m doing much better. As to your hardware help, that is also coming along. I have my eye on a beautiful laptop that will serve this gallery as a platform for exhibition. What I am salivating over is the film that you re-made with Chris Marker, “Three Cheers for the Whale” [1972; English version, 2007]. I hope that it is OK if we screen it again.

Mucho amor, Craig

Ever since I met Craig in 1987, he has allowed me to dig around amongst the archeological wonders of his 992 Valencia Street film archive. Usually, I am a spelunker rummaging around in his cave, presuming I am looking for something specific and discovering that what I am least expecting to find is what I most need. Over these three decades, I have nourished these films and my work as a filmmaker in ways that would never have happened without Craig and his basement resource: The House of Science (1991);

A Biography of Lilith (1997); The Last Happy Day (2009); And Then We Marched (2017); and Tip of My Tongue (2017).

2015

My darling sister, please know that EVERY DAY we are compiling your footage…
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel: and it is next Tuesday, when I will mail shipment #3, which will have 2 rolls. Important: as I compile these shots and scenes, should I just white-tape them, or single-splice them? Also, just to let you know: I am keeping close track of the labor hours, and you will have a BIG payment coming up. But I will be more than fair with you, Lynne-y , because I owe you soooo much…

Howdy Lynne-y,

Here’s a Hanukkah present for you. Plus, a couple of straggles from our big “Tip of My Tongue” haul. Hope that stuff is working for you. Thanks for all the help this last year. I sure needed it. You came to my rescue, like a true friend. Love, Craig

Ok Lynne-y!

My laptop has raised my quality of life, though that is about to lower again as there are new calls for radically raised rent levels. All the help is absolutely essential. Craig

Ok Sis,

Another holiday gift for you. Things have settled a bit now, after ATA’s New Lease Navidad party this weekend. My oh so slick laptop continues to make the navigation of the treacherous interweb a much more comfortable process. Craig

Lynne,

One day I will tell you the story of how $8.25 was stolen out of my OVER-ALL pants during my first visit to NY. I was picked up by a con-man in Washington Square Park. I had to sleep in a Catholic hostel on the Lower East Side, my bunk- mate was Cool Breeze, the first time I ever heard that name. That would be mid/ late-70s, methinks. The rip-off artist and I walked up to the 4th floor on a Lower East Side tenement, and he robbed my little West Coast hippie self… (over-alls!) From the sum of $3 in change that he didn’t get from me, I hitch-hiked all the way back to SF by way of Vancouver, BC (and I had to both sneak into and out of Canada), both great stories!! I have even better stories, including the first time I had intercourse, as a hitch-hiker on the road to Santa Barbara (where I just now gave a big presentation… Constance Penley is a huge fan.) and the soundtrack was classical musician Antonin Dvzorak which IS PLAYING RIGHT NOW IN MY STUDIO!!!! Are you blowing your mind yet? If I was just 17, it still would not be rape, because it was consensual. Lynne–do not tell anybody about this story.

l only got into it because I was particularly intrigued with the Dylan legacy in NYC, see, as naive as I was… I had every record by Bob Dylan… I got a million of these stories, I am not braggin’… my life has been very risky, full of danger… my brothers don’t have a clue as to what a desperate level of experience I’ve endured. ciao babe… cb

In response to my quest for found footage material related to every year of my life, Craig wrote to me about his own personal investigations and reflections.

I have occasionally considered the project of pinpointing a certain day/event that my fellow humans – maybe a best friend or lover – have lived thru, completely separate and autonomous from me, and then exploring those separate passages of time – as if playing back separate tapes in a row of playback decks, and so get a cross-section layering of personal POVs across/thru a “universal” global event… to appreciate multiple ‘careers’ in the literal sense of the word, and

so to understand human life/relationships on a longitudinal/diachronic axis,
as opposed to the synchronic “now” one that becomes dominant when you become lovers. It flirts with the idea of “fate” – that deepens the mystery of
it – but it can be more formal, and is in fact a sort of sociology, affording an extra-personal/outside-of-the-self understanding across human society. This would be interesting enough as a non-fiction, with points-of-view and gestures placed next to each other particularly for a ‘cinematic’ rhythm effect (Coppola’s famous scene in godfather)… BUT! One could stray a little bit off ‘documentary’ and insert – as you do in your Your Day is My Night shiftbed movie – a fictional line(s) that ultimately crossed another ‘career’, and then the people have sex or get married or kill each other in a fight, whatever blah blah. cb

Hello Lynne-y!

Things here are pretty bad, and getting worse. The prospect of moving out is necessitating some very dirty labor, and of course stress, and a spirit of doom and gloom among roommates and ATA principals. Every day I have to reach deep for strength and peace of mind. Though we will not stop making art!!! Doing some of that tonight with Molly Hankwitz in my studio. Much amor, Craig

2017

lynne-y, thanks for your great letter!

Things are pretty horrible here – no toilet or shower for 2 months, and no electricity in many circuits… jack-hammering all day… one roommate has
left, and because of cost over-runs, ATA is now broke, and crowd-funding. Programming group shows of short works around themes is a downright inspired curatorial move, I must say… but it is insanely labor-intensive! The way that

most programmers get thru it is to just Call for Submissions (and then charge the artists money just for the chance to submit, on top of that!). anyway, we are staying in the loop(s)… poopsie!!… Later, me sweets!!… cb

2018

In Spring 2018, I organized a retrospective of Craig’s films in New York City by working with programmers at UnionDocs, Light Industry, Metrograph Theater, and Bard College. Together, we put together seven sold-out screenings of his work on 16mm and digital. Craig attended each and every screening, introducing each program and taking questions from his extraordinarily enthusiastic audiences in New York.

L – well, lordie, I really can’t claim to be superman enough to throw together more than 2 or 3 shows … doing those things is very tricky and also technically worrisome. What I am saying is that we’d have to have more in the show than my own performance ‘acts’… I have a longer-form double-projection work, 3-D in fact, called “Nth Dimension”, and we can call that the anchor… let’s call that 20 mins. Then I have a blimp thang, maybe 7–10 mins., and that is double projection too… AH!! Just had an insight!!… I will build two reels, and they will be an hour each, and we will roll thru those reels on their respective projectors and embedded in there will be my 3 or so “discrete” pieces, but also there will be a lot of “fun” footage in there that will stand on its own, because it is, well, an odd artifact from the Archive… which is a distinctive feature of Other Cinema… the deep engagement with 20C industrial cinema!!

Ok, so I guess I am working up to this now in brainstorm mode… I will get back
to you later with some bon mots about it… including some individual titles. And by the way, it would not ALL have to be in these “twin” reels, we could throw video on from time to time… (assuming there will be a video projector there,
and playback devices–VHS would be required!! OC LOVES VHS!!)… I suppose – thinking out loud again – that those “secondary” video shorts would be typical tropes of the OC project… pieces that speak to the OC experience, maybe docs about the archive… for the most part, the Sat. show will be mostly 16mm, a lot of 3-D (I have the glasses), a looser feel, people drinkin’ and making out. Struggling very hard under heavy weight of my curatorial responsibilities right now, and can hardly look even 15 degrees off the necessary escape route, to swim out of this cave.

cb

I could live thru [seeing her], but she will be shocked at the pathetic shell of the old white man that she will see… I will be embarrassed, and her stomach will turn at the sight of what time can do to a loser beatnik living a borderline, absurdly unhealthy, preposterously precarious life… but I would not exclude her, of course not.

It would be easier if you might be close to my side sometimes, as an emotional support in the face of one of the greatest fails of my life… cb

2019

L – As to your text in A Month of Single Frames, your Hammer film… I thought it was wonderful! It was like a George Landow movie, just talking directly to the audience, in a sublimely wise admission that we are all just mortal human bodies, … here together for a short while… then all gonna die, like Barbara… It was her talking to us from behind the screen. It was like she was talking to us from beyond the grave. It was mystical, and yet structural.

I am in an incredibly strained, painful, rush to complete my own presentations, and all hell is breaking loose over here… we have an out-of-town visitor/sub-letter who is not really doing so well in the City, and an Other friend just out of hospital with gallbladder OPERation, and more continued ATA negligence and slacker- shit, and a zillion people (rock bands!) coming and going thru the doors, and the finale to Jeremy Rourke’s act is all about my archive, with my narration taken from a phone conversation… and it is a stand-alone genius tribute, utterly brill 4-screen hand-synced up with remotes (while he is playing music) – he made a song out of the titles to some films in there, and shows the cans and shows the frames animated that are in the cans (and that includes my O No Coronado!!)… and tomorrow I have a huge show with FOUR live performers, and then a 12-hr whole day after that of panic editing before I rush to airport.

I have just now been able (not really) to catch up with the clean-up and back-log of affairs after that HISTORIC venture into the Big Bad Apple… and now my heart is beating again in a rather dangerous way about upcoming gigs… AND please!! You must tell me again the history you had with Bruce Conner!? I will fold it

into my lecture!! [I got my start in experimental filmmaking during a 1985–86 internship with one of Craig’s and my greatest heroes of collage filmmaking, Bruce Conner.]

lynne-y!

Gee, THANKS SOO much for the chocolate-covered strawberries!!!!!!!! And it is a miracle that I got them, cuz I was just ready to jump on my bike and ride to office depot to pick up the newly printed calendar, but an intern came, and just as I was taking her into the editing-room-under the sidewalk, the phone started to ring, and well, I wasn’t going to be able to get back to it and pick it up, but after 2 rings I turned and bolted for it, and it was the delivery-woman at the door!… So the new intern and I gulped down the first two delicacies. An hour later, with 2000 OC cals in hand (with your name on the April 7 headline), the OC folding gang (including David Cox) came in for the task at hand, and the choco-berries were passed around and truly savored… so thanks for making our session a super sweet one, you sweet one!!

–cb

Lynne- well well, ok the cat is out of the bag… and that is alright for you and
for me and for OC. And the whole world. OC still does want to show your film in spring, but if fest options open up, of course we will defer. IF IF YOU WAnt an OC gig… (so please let us know within a week) AND… WOW, sis, that SlamDance would OPEN with your movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! well… I TOLD YOU SO!!! You got a zinger, girl!! HOoRAY HORRAY!! You/we won one!! I am very proud of you, and I am totally identifying with you, darling… please suggest to Slamdance peeps to accommodate your opening to the SUNdance fest so that those lazy lay-abouts-

From 1991 to 2019, I shot film, videotape, and digital images of my father. In 2020, I completed Film About a Father Who which premiered as the opening night movie at Slamdance and then at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight. Throughout the making of the film, Craig offered me the support of a dear friend and fellow artist.

in-Park-City could finally get energized about some things that are HUMAN-LY important…… and so moved to take a goddam Lyft down that wet road to spend 2 hours watching your masterwork!~ … and it is because of your vision, your strength, and your endurance, and your good faith, open-mindedness, your tolerance, your intellectual curiosity, your bottom-less generosity, and your full-frontal honesty to deal with issues that would formerly (and formally!) be considered too ‘personal’. your total fan, cb…

After spending months going through my own archive, I shared Craig’s letters with the man himself.

Lynne: Wowowowow! That is a great idea for an article. It is like you are doing ethnography, on that certain sort of urban, gig-economy, declassé white loser that is me, and that the letters are the “primary source material” … real media archeology… you, hunkering down with your little whisk broom, and excavating these written artifacts. And I will for sure eat it all (back) up… BUT it cannot be
in next 48 hours, because I am rushing to pack for a (film fest) trip to Chile. I am so freaked out about packing that I literally threw up, 2 hours ago… So, my gawd, hopefully I can read on the plane (do they have internet connection on them these days?.)… I can prolly give you ‘some guidance’ eventually. But you don’t have to prove anything to Brett and Steve… they already know that you are in good faith. Even if all you have is that bare naked “raw source material”… cb

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