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Interview with Craig Baldwin, filmmaker.

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So whether or not you know about art povera

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my idea of cinema povera

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that is to say,
impoverished cinema

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made out of our situation,
which is marginalized

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Rather than apply for the grants
or get studio funding,

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just work form where we are,
poor people,

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

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taking advantage of the resources 
that we already have,

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

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a culture of instant obsolescence,

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I call it
"surfing the wave of obsolescence".

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

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are all being thrown away

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just because of a format change,
same thing happened

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same thing happened to vinyl

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to magnetic tape,

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and magnetic tape to CDs

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

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and we have of course the scratch DJ

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Hip-Hop,
as an art form,

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because of the availability of vinyl.

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poor people again, in New York

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Harlem, or whatever,

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would be able to go 
and find these old albums

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which had no value at all

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because they had been made obsolete

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by the next generation,

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the next media platform,

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so they could get two copies of it

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So this is just one anecdote 
that illustrates my point

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a mediocre record perhaps

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but something  that has some hooks
that they can recognise

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and there would be a lot of them because

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they're thrown out en masse

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

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and they could basically scratch between them

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and produce kind of a scratch music.

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

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the film is old,
it's available,

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it deserves to be redeemed

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

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Certainly I'm not opposed 
to shooting my own stuff

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

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

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because I'm sure it has redeeming qualities

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but generally it looks too...

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

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Personally I like something 
that speaks of the history

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of our experience,
not only of our media history,

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which is folded into it,
but also...

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there's something a little bit 
necrophiliac about it,

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there's something about loss.

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So I like the older look

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

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without studio or foundation backing,

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and it allowed me

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the pleasure of... 
some kind of perverse revenge

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on these old films, see,

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so for all those reasons

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

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I know that there's gatekeepers out there

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at every level.

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certainly in production, funding,
exhibition

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

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

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I don't live in their world

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

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So I just do what I can
in my own way

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and I can't get brought down

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by all the other power relations

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because it would just weigh too heavily on me.

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So this may come up later in the discussion,

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

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but my whole point has always
been about transgression

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I made a film called Sonic Outlaws.

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So I'm on the side of 

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the moving outside of the norm.

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You know I was talking about appropriation

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in Sonic Outlaws,
and culture jamming

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

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

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But certainly I, as a journalist,
a documentarian,

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as you are,

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

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There's five different ways around it

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One is just remaining outside,

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terminally outside,

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and beneath the radar
- that's one strategy.

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

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but again that's not my goal.

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

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it's not to be discounted

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remain beneath the radar 
and distribute material through

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what I call electronic folk culture

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it'll get out there,
it always does,

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

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Also the idea of...

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I had no money!
This is a legal issue -

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why sue me?

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I didn't represent a competitor

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a lot of that stuff is at the end

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Twentieth Century Fox 
versus Warner Brothers

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and that wasn't the case

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the playing field wasn't level.

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They would have nothing to get from me,

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why honour me with 
the distinction of being sued?

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

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everyone knows Negativeland now

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even though there just a goofy little band,

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but because they squared off with U2

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they're the good guy.

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

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

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it may be that you're not sued,

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

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

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of the media democracy and 
media literacy movement,

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which does not tell people didactically

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

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or that press conference,

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but really through the language of cinema itself

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through the rhetoric and the image,

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creates a dysfunctional kind of grammar

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

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In my movie Sonic outlaws,
Negativeland, one member says

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"Intentions are exposed"

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

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in other words, push the contradictions 
within any advertisement

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

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and kinda see

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how they intended to manipulate people

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Rather than me explain it to them

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if it can be from within the piece itself, see

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