SFCINEMATHEQUE

X

Saturday, June 21, 2003

Science In Action! A Craig Baldwin Retrospective

Program 2: Cannibalizing Culture

San Francisco Art Institute





Taking collage to vertiginous extremes, the self-proclaimed “King of Found Footage” here offers a pair of films (and then some) dealing overtly with the recontextual reflex-the seemingly unstoppable drive to reuse, recycle (and reinsert) borrowed and/or stolen elements of contemporary cultural content. 1978’s Wild Gunman finds advertising imagery and cowboy iconography manically collaged within the penny arcade, while 1995’s Sonic Outlaws reformats the rockumentary in exploration of the misadventures of Oakland’s own rogue samplers, Negativland, as they dodge the blows of the litigious recording industry. Latecomers will miss Baldwin’s earliest admitted work, the provocative Stolen Movie, composed of provocative bum-rushing (w/ Super 8 camera) of SF movie houses circa 1975. (Steve Polta)