program #2 - Searching for Heroes

8 October, 2016 - 21:15
Cinematek, Brussels

I start out on a quest. Thus, again I am speaking of a man in the past, a hero-maker, a storyteller, an image-maker, with whom I was vitally concerned—gradually; I didn’t know any initial point I was concerned with in general, but I was concerned with heroes. Just like a warrior, this poet would start when it was time to start, not knowing really particularly where. And then where he found himself—places that began to tell him where he was bound—he then, of course, began to know about where he was after all.” – B.B.

This program presents two films—Quixote and To Parsifal—that explore the imagistic heroic with which Baillie identified during his quest period with many idols.

Introduced by Garbiñe Ortega.

Quixote

Bruce Baillie
,
US
,
1964
,
16mm
,
45'

Bruce Baillie’s rarely screened Quixote stands alongside other synoptic 60s masterpieces such as Stan Brakhage’s The Art of Vision and Peter Kubelka‘s Unsere Afrikareise, which use dense collages of diverse images in an attempt to make sense of a troubling world. In Quixote wild horses and a basketball game are part of a cross-country trip that ends with an antiwar demonstration in Manhattan. Baillie says he’s depicting our culture as one of conquest, but his film’s greatness lies not in its social analysis. Rather it’s in the way his superimposed and intercut images float almost weightlessly in space, creating a hypnotic sense of displacement that lets us see beyond aggression. (Fred Camper)

To Parsifal

Bruce Baillie
,
US
,
1963
,
16mm
,
colour
,
16'

“Still one of my best. Tribute to the hero, Parsifal… the European legend as basic structure, as well as the hero… ‘He who becomes slowly wise.’ (Wagner, Parsifal) Promised land, I suppose… ‘Parsifal, Bleibe! (Stay!)’ (Kundry)… the last temptation… time, flesh, etc.… Off the coast, at sea, the mountains and the… slow freight trains through the passes; the Wagnerian spirit, ancient Christian legend. Compassion for nature, pursuit (of Eternal Life) through the heroic form.” – B.B.