Artists Space

Attention Line Cinema Series:
The Films of Craig Baldwin

June 15 – June 25

As part of Attention Line, Artists Space presents a retrospective of films by Craig Baldwin in our downstairs cinema.

Shocking revelations, covert histories, unidentified flying objects, copyright infringement, the very fate of humanity…all this and more, much more, can be discovered in this retrospective of maverick filmmaker Craig Baldwin. A master of found footage storytelling, Baldwin’s dynamic short and feature length epics are rapid fire quasi-fiction essays on topics real and utterly unbelievable. Baldwin is one of the premiere experimental filmmakers of his or any generation, and these screenings definitively prove that he is as deadly serious as he is deeply funny.

Craig Baldwin, *Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America* (still), 1992. [A group of eight figures with beaks for noses, and dressed in red and white outfits and helmets, stand in an imposing formation against a yellow background.]

Wednesday, June 15

12:15 - 5pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

Stolen Movie (1976, Super 8mm-on-video, 9 minutes)
Wild Gunman (1978, 16mm-on-video, 1978, 19 minutes)
RocketKitKongoKit (1986, 16mm-on-video, 30 minutes)
Communique for the Cube (2015, Digital, 1:16 minutes)
Bulletin (2015, Digital, 5:40 minutes)
(total running time: 64 minutes)

5pm: Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1991, 16mm-on-video, 48 minutes)

Upon its release in 1991, Tribulation 99 became an instant counter-culture classic. Baldwin's "pseudo-pseudo-documentary" presents a factual chronicle of US intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory, combining covert action, environmental catastrophe, space aliens, cattle mutilations, killer bees, religious prophecy, doomsday diatribes, and just about every other crackpot theory broadcast through the dentures of the modern paranoiac.

Thursday, June 16

12:15 - 5pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts
Stolen Movie (1976, Super 8mm-on-video, 9 minutes)
Wild Gunman (1978, 16mm-on-video, 1978, 19 minutes)
RocketKitKongoKit (1986, 16mm-on-video, 30 minutes)
Communique for the Cube (2015, Digital, 1:16 minutes)
Bulletin (2015, Digital, 5:40 minutes)
(total running time: 64 minutes)

5pm: ¡O No Coronado! (1992, 16mm-on-video, 40 minutes)

¡O No Coronado! conceptualizes history as a tacky exploitation flick, using a mélange of images culled from swashbucklers, classroom movies, and Christian cartoons to recreate the journey of one of the least successful conquistadors, on his fruitless quest to find the imaginary Seven Cities of Cibola, incidentally discovering America before returning to Mexico City in sodden disarray.

Friday, June 17

12:15 - 4pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

4pm: Sonic Outlaws (1995, 16mm-on-video, 87 minutes)

Within days after the release of Negativland's clever parody of U2 and Casey Kasem, recording industry giant Island Records descended upon the band with a battery of lawyers intent on erasing the piece from the history of rock music. Baldwin follows this and other intellectual property controversies across the contemporary arts scene. Playful and ironic, his cut-and-paste collage-essay surveys the prospects for an "electronic folk culture" in the midst of an increasingly commodified corporate media landscape.

Saturday, June 18

4:30pm: Spectres of the Spectrum (1999, 16mm-on-video, 94 minutes)

Spectres of the Spectrum plunders Baldwin's treasure trove of early television shows, industrial and educational films, Hollywood movies, advertisements and cartoons, combining these with live-action footage, no-budget special effects, and relentless narration to generate a wholly original paranoid science-fiction epic.

Wednesday, June 22

12:15 - 4pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

4pm: Mock Up on Mu (2008, 16mm-on-video, 110 minutes)

A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Craig Baldwin's Mock Up On Mu cobbles together a feature-length "collage-narrative" based on (mostly) true stories of California's post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles. Pulp-serial snippets, industrial-film imagery, and B- (and Z-) fiction clips are intercut with newly shot live-action material, powering a playful, allegorical trajectory through the now-mythic occult matrix of Jack Parsons (Crowleyite founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab), L.Ron Hubbard (sci-fi author turned cult-leader), and Marjorie Cameron (bohemian artist and "mother of the New Age movement"). Their intertwined tales spin out into a speculative farce on the militarization of space, and the corporate take-over of spiritual fulfillment and leisure-time.

7pm: Craig Baldwin in Conversation with Adam Khalil
Online

Thursday, June 23

12:15 - 5pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

5pm: Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1991, 16mm-on-video, 48 minutes)

Friday, June 24

12:15 - 5pm: A continuous screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

5pm: ¡O No Coronado! (1992, 16mm-on-video, 40 minutes)

Saturday, June 25

12:15pm: A screening of Baldwin’s collected shorts

1:30pm: Sonic Outlaws (1995, 87 minutes, 16mm-on-video)

3pm: Spectres of the Spectrum (1999, 16mm-on-video, 94 minutes)

5pm: Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1991, 16mm-on-video, 48 minutes)

Program support is provided by Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The David Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.

A prime catalyst in the Bay Area experimental film scene, and a significant figure in the global community of moving image artists, Craig Baldwin is a filmmaker and programmer without parallel. His bold and paranoiac short and feature films combine newly shot footage with archival materials excised from discarded educational and industrial films. Baldwin’s cinematic agenda is to uncover truths that are lies and to spin tall tales out of rumors. Whether he’s crafting essayistic film exposés about the CIA in the Congo, dramatizing the plight of L. Ron Hubbard on the moon, or explaining how the band Negativland got sued by disc jockey Casey Kasem, Baldwin presents his viewers with imagery that seems to explain everything while at the same time confusing everything else.

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Attention Line Cinema Series: The Films of Craig Baldwin

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Attention Line Cinema Series:
The Films of Craig Baldwin