Craig Baldwin - Appropriating, Scratching and Decoding

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Craig Baldwin is an appropriationist filmmaker and operator of 'The Other Cinema' in San Francisco's Mission district. His film Sonic Outlaws was the first feature documentary that directly addressed the emerging conflict over copyright in the early 1990s. Here he introduces the logic behind his appropriationist approach, aesthetic, economic and semiotic. His approach challenges proprietary views of cultural objects and he considers the risks in his practice. http://footage.stealthisfilm.com/video/19

This interview was recorded for Steal This Film II. The project tries to bring new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think 'after intellectual property', and think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity. This is a film that has no single author. It makers encourage its 'theft', downloading, distribution and screening, and have made the entire film and its footage available for download in HDV format, on their website and on Pirate Bay.

Interview with Craig Baldwin, filmmaker.
Steal This Film II
autonomy
culture industry

San Francisco

So whether or not you know about art povera

my idea of cinema povera

that is to say,
impoverished cinema

made out of our situation,
which is marginalized

Rather than apply for the grants
or get studio funding,

just work form where we are,
poor people,

but taking advantage of the fat of the land,
so to speak,

taking advantage of the resources
that we already have,

in other words...
.... trash,

a culture of instant obsolescence,

I call it
"surfing the wave of obsolescence".

All these films here,
that you may or may not see,

are all being thrown away

just because of a format change,
same thing happened

same thing happened to vinyl

to magnetic tape,

and magnetic tape to CDs

and it'll go on and on,
it'll be totally digital next year

and we have of course the scratch DJ

Hip-Hop,
as an art form,

because of the availability of vinyl.

poor people again, in New York

Harlem, or whatever,

would be able to go
and find these old albums

which had no value at all

because they had been made obsolete

by the next generation,

the next media platform,

so they could get two copies of it

So this is just one anecdote
that illustrates my point

a mediocre record perhaps

but something that has some hooks
that they can recognise

and there would be a lot of them because

they're thrown out en masse

and they'd be able to get
two copies of the same record

and they could basically scratch between them

and produce kind of a scratch music.

What I'm trying to do is a scratch film,
which is the same thing,

the film is old,
it's available,

it deserves to be redeemed

as I say,
if that's not too idealistic,

Certainly I'm not opposed
to shooting my own stuff

most of the stuff you see
that's shot new now,

it's not attractive to me,
maybe that's my problem,

because I'm sure it has redeeming qualities

but generally it looks too...

well you know,
well I'm just not interested in the look.

Personally I like something
that speaks of the history

of our experience,
not only of our media history,

which is folded into it,
but also...

there's something a little bit
necrophiliac about it,

there's something about loss.

So I like the older look

and I had access to it,
I could make the film

without studio or foundation backing,

and it allowed me

the pleasure of...
some kind of perverse revenge

on these old films, see,

so for all those reasons

towards what I call collage,
or collage-essay, filmmaking.

I know that there's gatekeepers out there

at every level.

certainly in production, funding,
exhibition

but don't you see, my whole model
was always outside of all that

in fact my whole project is called
"The Other Cinema".

I don't live in their world

so they can get fucked
as far as I'm concerned.

So I just do what I can
in my own way

and I can't get brought down

by all the other power relations

because it would just weigh too heavily on me.

So this may come up later in the discussion,

but as far as the intellectual property laws,
I know a little bit about them,

but my whole point has always
been about transgression

I made a film called Sonic Outlaws.

So I'm on the side of

the moving outside of the norm.

You know I was talking about appropriation

in Sonic Outlaws,
and culture jamming

So in a way it was a report,
don't you see, on the material

and as it turns out
I do advocate it by the way,

But certainly I, as a journalist,
a documentarian,

as you are,

that would be my product, my artistic license,
to talk about that

There's five different ways around it

One is just remaining outside,

terminally outside,

and beneath the radar
- that's one strategy.

that's not going to work for people
who are running for president

but again that's not my goal.

There is a huge margin, by the way,
a huge peripherary

it's not to be discounted

remain beneath the radar
and distribute material through

what I call electronic folk culture

it'll get out there,
it always does,

especially now with the new media,
which may be coming up here...

Also the idea of...

I had no money!
This is a legal issue -

why sue me?

I didn't represent a competitor

a lot of that stuff is at the end

Twentieth Century Fox
versus Warner Brothers

and that wasn't the case

the playing field wasn't level.

They would have nothing to get from me,

why honour me with
the distinction of being sued?

That's what happened in Negativeland and U2
by the way,

everyone knows Negativeland now

even though there just a goofy little band,

but because they squared off with U2

they're the good guy.

Yeah, you just win by having
the courage of your conviction

And then again if you take a stance like that,
an ethical stance,

it may be that you're not sued,

because it'll just make the
larger corporation look bad.

I'm at, I guess you could say,
the extreme edge

of the media democracy and
media literacy movement,

which does not tell people didactically

what's wrong with that commercial,
or that advertisement,

or that press conference,

but really through the language of cinema itself

through the rhetoric and the image,

creates a dysfunctional kind of grammar

that allows people to have the insight
and to see the lie

In my movie Sonic outlaws,
Negativeland, one member says

"Intentions are exposed"

and that's really what I'm trying to do

in other words, push the contradictions
within any advertisement

so you can see almost the people
who are writing the script

and kinda see

how they intended to manipulate people

Rather than me explain it to them

if it can be from within the piece itself, see

so you know, the secret of the decoding
is kind of within the message itself.

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