Lightstruck: Craig Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws

Lightstruck presents Sonic Outlaws (1995) by Craig Baldwin, shot and edited by Bill Daniel. 16mm, bw & color, 87m.

Preceded by: Craig's Cutting Room Floor (2011) by Linda Izcali Scobie, 16mm, bw & color, 1.5m

As mass media gets ever massier, and as the unbidden tide of its content/sewage has reached unimaginable, epic proportions, Lightstruck finds itself eagerly and urgently needing to present Craig Baldwin’s iconic experimental collage essay film Sonic Outlaws (1995) as a crucial antidote.

Exploring and illuminating the culture jamming and media appropriation work of Negativland, John Oswald, Tape-beatles, Barbie Liberation Organization, and Emergency Broadcast Network, Sonic Outlaws remains one of the defining (and most entertaining) informational/educational texts exploring what we as a citizenry might do to creatively defang and critically feed back into this unchecked, unregulated, unenlightening mass- and social-media hellscape. Even if it feels like throwing a single vial of vaccine at a virus the size of Vermont, we guarantee you will come away from this film inspired and activated to weather the daily screen-based onslaught that comprises our collective daily adventure.

Shot on eight different formats by longtime friend and collaborator Bill Daniel, Baldwin’s film is far more than a documentary or critical appraisal of a movement, as it actively engages in the sample-based, pastiche linguistics of radical collage that are Sonic Outlaws’ core focus. The film’s centerpiece is the storied lawsuit brought against Bay Area band Negativland, whose 1991 release “U2” badly pissed off Island Records and nearly got the band sued out of existence. Baldwin intimately understands that the Negativland-U2 debacle is merely the most conveniently archetypal reference point for a much larger investigation of the underlying implications and overriding ideologies he and his subjects eloquently articulate throughout the film.

Program by Zena Grey & Mark Toscano. Notes by Mark Toscano. 16mm print courtesy of Craig Baldwin!