A very brief lyrical portrait of the eponymous Japanese gardener at work.

“A living saint projected onto the silver screen. Why did I make this film? I wanted to help my friend find a job in Berkeley. It was one of my first attempts to create film as both utilitarian and Art. Cinema must be meaningful and wonderful in a single stroke of camera and mind. Mr. Hayashi was my own, simple example, derived from an experience in a Zagreb city well, where water and daily gossip flowed freely.” – B.B.

A film mass, for the Dakota Sioux. The Ordinary Mass is traditionally a celebration of Life; thus perhaps there is a contradiction between the form of the Mass and the theme of death in any Requiem Mass (Mozart, etc.). The dedication is to the (religious) nation destroyed by a civilization that evolved from the Mass. Created during the winter of 1963-64, between Berkeley and Mendocino, after a trip into North and South Dakota, down through the junction of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, and back to the West Coast. The heroic aspect of this work is part of a personal chain of discovery for the author, including To Parsifal, Quixote, and Quick Billy.

“Filmed in Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. Titles in Spanish. Skin, eyes, knees, horses, hair, sun, earth. Old song of a Mexican hero, Valentin, sung by the blind Jose Santollo Nacido en Santa Cruz de la Soledad… The film emerges from the always painful, continuing impossibility of recording one’s own life! I remember that the strength of my daily impressions there was so severe that I really thought I couldn’t live through it… It led me… into an essential question about recording, filming itself. Whether it’s a distinct action from those actions you make according to just being, and not being a recorder of being, or the concern with creating another being. That is, I am talking about being an artist, a vehicle through which something flows: And all the particular pain from that flow was really at a peak when I was in Mexico… So, in Mexico, I began to shoot, using an extension tube with my Bolex and the three-inch lens—skin, the vibrations in the wooden paving bricks, and the ground, the sun coming up through the road, and the blood flowing down there in the earth. And the sun was so intense I would have thought that the images would be more overexposed. They were so heavy. I deliberately purchased Kodachrome reversal stock down there—contrasty and saturated …

I kind of liked Valentin. I named my horse after that film, and I’m still stuck with a kind of primitive view of terrestrial-temporal existence—like horse, home, woman, man.” – B.B.

“A film for the East Bay Activity Center in Oakland, a school for mentally disturbed children.” – B.B.

In drie delen met drie verschillende formele strategieën toont Baillie ons ontmoetingen met natuurlijke schoonheid die hij aantreft in de North Bay in de buurt van San Franscisco. het eerste deel betreft een studie van pruimbloesems, weergegeven in rijke en veelvuldige dubbeldrukken die de witte bloemen weergeven als een uitbarsting in een storm van visuele complexiteit gekadreerd in een over paarse bergen bewegend shot. In het tweede deel laat baillie ons kijken naar het kleine meisje uit de titel dat samen met haar hond aan de kant van de weg naar auto’s wuift, verloren in haar wereld en gedachten. De cadrages van Baillie blijven eenvoudig, zonder de nood om elementen toe te voegen of weg te halen. Het derde deel toont waterinsecten aan het oppervlak van een vijver en herinnert ons aan het zeer opmerkelijke en gevoelige camerawerk van Baillie terwijl hij de elegante dansen, het subtiele licht en het effect van de bewegingen op het wateroppervlak observeert. (Mark Toscano)