Craig Baldwin
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Craig Baldwin (born 1952) is an American
experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
maker. He uses found footage from the fringes of popular consciousness as well as images from the
mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information ...
to undermine and transform the traditional documentary, infusing it with the energy of high-speed montage and a provocative commentary that targets subjects from
intellectual property rights Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
to rampant
consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supp ...
.


Early life

Craig Baldwin was born in
Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
. He grew up the youngest child in a middle-class family in Carmichael. During high school, he became interested in
Beatnik Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle. History In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the undergr ...
culture. He went to
underground film An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing. Notable examples include: John Waters' ''Pink Flamingos'', David Lynch's ''Eraserhead'', Andy Warhol's ''Blue Movie'', Rosa von Praunheim's ''Ta ...
screenings and started filming with a Super 8 camera. Baldwin attended college at
University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
. There, he took film classes through the theatre department and began collecting films. He was also politically active as a student. Baldwin left UC Davis in the early 1970s and later attended the
University of California at Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...
.


Career


Early activities (1976–1990)

Baldwin made his
Super 8 film Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format. The film is nominally 8 mm wide, the same as older formatted ...
''Stolen Movie'' in 1976 by running into movie theaters and filming the screen. He made his next short film, ''Flick Skin'', while working at porn theaters. Baldwin made his 1978 film ''Wild Gunman,'' a critical look at the figure of the
Marlboro Man The Marlboro Man is a figure that was used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999. The Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. ...
, using clips from the 1974 Nintendo arcade game of the same name, as well as B-movies and advertisements obtained from
grindhouse A grindhouse or action house is an American term for a theatre that mainly shows low-budget horror, splatter and exploitation films for adults. According to historian David Church, this theater type was named after the "grind policy", a fil ...
s. In 1984, Baldwin moved to San Francisco's Mission District and contributed to the founding of
Artists' Television Access Artists' Television Access (ATA) is a non-profit art gallery and screening venue in San Francisco's Mission District in the United States of America. ATA exhibits work by emerging, independent and experimental artists in its theatre and gallery ...
In 1987, he started his long-running Other Cinema series at the space. In 1986, Baldwin earned an M.A. from
San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
. It was there that he first became interested in
collage film Collage film is a style of film created by juxtaposing found footage from disparate sources. The term has also been applied to the physical collaging of materials onto film stock. Surrealist roots The surrealist movement played a critical role i ...
during his studies with
Bruce Conner Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas.His well- ...
. It was during this period that Baldwin started amassing a large collection of film works, many of which were discarded by institutions moving over to VHS. He drew from this collection for his 1986 film ''RocketKitKongoKit'', which narrates the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
's role in establishing
Mobutu Sese Seko Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997 (known as the Democratic Republic o ...
's
military dictatorship A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer. The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...
in
Zaire Zaire (, ), officially the Republic of Zaire (french: République du Zaïre, link=no, ), was a Congolese state from 1971 to 1997 in Central Africa that was previously and is now again known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zaire was, ...
(now the
DR Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
) and the history of rocket testing there by a German weapons manufacturer. It often visually re-enacts the story with loosely associated footage, such as cartoons,
industrial film Sponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is a film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited t ...
s, or
science fiction film Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar ...
s. Like many of Baldwin's later works, ''RocketKitKongoKit'' used documentary techniques not to present an authoritative history but to counter official histories by presenting alternative histories and blurring the boundaries between them. An early proponent of
culture jamming Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It atte ...
, Baldwin has altered billboards with political messages and has documented the work of the
Billboard Liberation Front The Billboard Liberation Front practices culture jamming via altering billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message. It started in San Francisco in 1977. Advertising executives informed Jil ...
through the 1990s.


Mid-career work (1991–2000)

'' Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America'' (1991), perhaps his most well-known film, is an account of CIA intervention in developing countries (as well as a critique of paranoid conspiracy theories) presented in the form of a
pseudo-documentary A pseudo-documentary or fake documentary is a film or video production that takes the form or style of a documentary film but does not portray real events. Rather, scripted and fictional elements are used to tell the story. The pseudo-documentary, ...
that recounts the history of an alien occupation of
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
in 99 brief ramblings.
J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at ''The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...
put ''Tribulation 99'' as #3 on his list of the ten best films 1991–2000. Baldwin's ''¡O No Coronado!'' (1992) is a retelling of the invasion of the American southwest by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in the mid-16th century. It was his first film to include original live-action footage. His next film, ''Sonic Outlaws,'' spotlights the
Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
-based band
Negativland Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label (Seeland Records) is named after another Neu! track. The co ...
, which was sued in 1991 by U2 over a parody
sound collage In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throug ...
it had made. Baldwin film chronicles that case along with various activist groups working for
copyright reform Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implem ...
. Baldwin's 1999 film ''
Spectres of the Spectrum ''Spectres of the Spectrum'' is a 1999 science fiction collage film by American filmmaker Craig Baldwin. The story follows a father and daughter living in post-apocalyptic wasteland as they fight against corporate control of the electromagnetic spe ...
'' is a science fiction allegory that tells the story of a young woman with telepathic powers who travels back in time to save the world from an electro-magnetic pulse. The film takes a cautionary stance against the media outlets in charge of creating and perpetuating the popular mainstream, and in doing so, follows the trajectory, through collage, of media from its beginnings to the present. In 2000 Baldwin received the Moving Image
Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has commi ...
Award.


Later work (2001–present)

Baldwin established Other Cinema Digital in 2003 to provide distribution for films by independent, underground, and experimental filmmakers. In 2005 the label partnered with
Facets Video A facet is a flat surface of a geometric shape, e.g., of a cut gemstone. Facet may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Facets (album), ''Facets'' (album), an album by Jim Croce * Facets (Monty Alexander album), ''Facets'', a 1980 alb ...
to distribute a series of works on DVD. In 2008, Baldwin created ''
Mock Up on Mu ''Mock Up on Mu'' is a 2008 science fiction collage film directed by American experimental filmmaker Craig Baldwin. The film is a fictionalized continuation of the stories of L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, and Marjorie Cameron. Baldwin assembled it ...
'', a fictional story based heavily on the real facts of the lives of
L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored '' Dianeti ...
,
Marjorie Cameron Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – June 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the Engli ...
,
Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pro ...
, and Jack Parsons. Mostly assembled from found footage, ''Mock Up on Mu'' includes more original live-action footage than in earlier projects. Baldwin has taught at UC Davis and
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
.


Filmography

* ''Stolen Movie'' (1976) * ''Flick Skin'' (1977) * ''Wild Gunman'' (1978) * ''RocketKitKongoKit'' (1986) * '' Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America'' (1991) * ''¡O No Coronado!'' (1992) * ''Sonic Outlaws'' (1995) * ''
Spectres of the Spectrum ''Spectres of the Spectrum'' is a 1999 science fiction collage film by American filmmaker Craig Baldwin. The story follows a father and daughter living in post-apocalyptic wasteland as they fight against corporate control of the electromagnetic spe ...
'' (1999) * ''
Mock Up on Mu ''Mock Up on Mu'' is a 2008 science fiction collage film directed by American experimental filmmaker Craig Baldwin. The film is a fictionalized continuation of the stories of L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, and Marjorie Cameron. Baldwin assembled it ...
'' (2009)


References


External links

*
Other Cinema



Profile of Baldwin at Disinformation

Who Owns the Airwaves?

Video Interview with Baldwin at Cargo Magazine

Interview with Craig Baldwin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baldwin, Craig American experimental filmmakers Living people University of California, Davis alumni 1952 births Mission District, San Francisco Collage filmmakers Artists from Oakland, California