Comments (0) Best Film Programmer - 2001
Craig Baldwin
The depth and breadth of moviemaking in this country is beyond mind-boggling, but you'd never know it from the mainstream media's insatiable obsession with Hollywood. All the more reason to cherish Craig Baldwin, who has manned the rudder at the Other Cinema at Artists' Television Access for 15 years. A veritable force of nature, Baldwin has turned the Other into the leading Bay Area venue for off-kilter cinema and, not coincidentally, into a boho-anarchic institution. Political documentaries, campy B-movies, obscure music videos, new avant-garde shorts, ultra-bizarre one-offs, genre-bending experiments that defy categorization -- everything is grist for Baldwin's mill. On any given Saturday night at 8:30, $5 gets you hours of flicks pretty much guaranteed not to be seen anywhere else in this area code (with the filmmakers typically on hand) and a hefty helping of good old-fashioned American subversiveness. A filmmaker and writer, Baldwin recently started an online magazine about experimental media, OtherZine, at www.othercinema.com.
