Castro Street (The Coming of Consciousness)

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Castro Street (The Coming of Consciousness)
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1992.

Castro Street (subtitled The Coming of Consciousness) is a visual non-story documentary film directed by Bruce Baillie released in 1966.

Why It Rocks

1. This short film is not your typical narrative, rather it's a 10-minute experimental example of poetic cinema. It was filmed on the streets of Richmond, California — most notably Castro Street — near the Standard Oil Refinery. The film captures the interests of a healthier humanity within America’s postwar industrialization. For context, many Americans who came of age in the years shortly following the Great Depression and World War II, felt as if the burgeoning industrial might of modern America was both great thing and major issue. On one hand, productive factories and the railroads that ministered to them represented a recovery from economic disaster and war—indeed for the postwar generation, factories were beautiful in their power, an industrial sublime. But on the other hand, this industrial and economic recovery was clearly endangering the natural environments where this burgeoning industry had established itself—it was not unusual to hear that a river had caught fire from the high level of pollutants dumped into it. Industrial spaces were increasingly understood as blemishes on the landscape and, for some, visual emblems of this nation’s increasing addiction to over–consumption and wastefulness.
2. As ab-natural as the industrial sector of Richmond, California might seem, the film suggests that it is a product of nature, not only in the obvious senses—industry is built within nature, exploits natural re-sources—but in a spiritual sense: the same force that grows those flowers (the “spiritual” force so many of us go to nature to access) has inspired human animals to “grow” the material “flowers” of their imagination. If nature is the physical manifestation of the divine spirit, modern culture—and the industrial technologies that sustain it—manifests the human spirit in the process of emulating divinity. And recognizing this would maybe provide a hope that within an increasingly materialistic society, we can recognize the original sources of our power and find new, healthier ways to honor them, to reconnect with them.
3. The advantages and disadvantages of the oil industry represented a major challenge — especially since celluloid cinema itself was an industrially -– it produced mechanical/chemical medium that was doing damage to the American Eden. Baillie accepted the limitations of his medium, but used the filmmaking process in an unusual way: He'd collected some prisms and glasses from his mother’s kitchen, and various things in order to form high-contrast black-and-white film.
4. Its bright, primary colors and lateral tracking shots illustrate Baillie's fascination for opposites, as he described, "that are one, both in conflict and harmony, opposing each other and abiding together and requiring each other." He went after the soft color on one side of Castro Street where the Standard Oil towers were; the other side was black–and–white, the railroad switching yards. High contrast black–and–white film would normally be used for making titles. Here, not only represents two kinds of industrial space, but for the interplay between the physical elements of industry and commerce and the natural world within which these elements function.
5. Viewers may become aware of the flowers, grasses, movements of clouds and the changing light of the sun—visual elements that, on one level, are contextualized by the kaleidoscope of industrial activity, and at the same time represent the physical and historical context for modern industry itself. In some cases, the industrial images are framed so that they evoke elements of the natural surround: a smokestack is seen in a gorgeous scarlet iris—an industrial poppy; colorful pipes, at first seen out of focus (they could be flowers) subsequently come into focus; and a pan up a cluster of green pipes causes them to look like stems.
6. Unlike those who fetishize “nature,” and unlike commercial filmmakers who tend to worship all things modern, Baillie accepts and explores the liminal zone between nature and culture that makes modern life possible. The short simultaneously pays homage to modern industry and reflects Baillie’s desire to transcend the technoindustrial origins of cinema. The one phrase of popular music heard in the soundtrack is “Good Lovin’” from the Young Rascals song of the same name, just before the short ends.

The Film

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