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All My Life
All My Life is a 3-minute pan movement that opens on an old picket fence framed by the blue sky above and a stretch of summer-brown grass below. On the soundtrack, you can hear the crackle and hiss of an old record. Soon, Ella Fitzgerald starts singing “All My Life” in a 1936 session with the pianist Teddy Wilson.
Bio Bruce Baillie
American experimental filmmaker Bruce Baillie (1931-2020), along with friend and fellow cinematic artist Chick Strand, among others, founded San Francisco Cinematheque in 1961. His importance in creating spaces and systems of support and distribution for avant-garde filmmakers was enormous, as was his own work. His lyrical and keenly observational work evades genre and explores narratives in nontraditional forms—from short films to longer explorations. Castro Street (1966) was selected for preservation in 1992 by the United States National Film Registry.
There were ages of faith, when men made natural connections between themselves and the place in which they lived, the plants they cultivated, the fuel they used for warmth, their beasts, and their ancestors. My work will be discovering in American life those natural and ancient contacts through the art of cinema!
Climbing roses can reach a height of anywhere between eight and twenty feet. Usually they continue to grow even if no one takes care of them, which means that gardeners have to monitor the direction of their growth and stabilize them. Most rose bushes prefer the sun. They bloom best if they get sun all day. They also serve as bee magnets, a factor of growing importance. The rose bushes in All My Life are sun-drenched. One can almost smell them and imagine caterpillars feasting on the leaves protected by the shadow of the fence.
In many respects, the image is perfectly ordinary, the kind that you chance on if you’re driving along, say, a California road, as Mr. Baillie was when he popped out of a car, seized by inspiration. Yet, as the camera continues to float left and Fitzgerald begins singing (“All my life/I’ve been waiting for you”), something magical—call it cinema—happens in the middle of the first verse. As the words “My wonderful one/I’ve begun” warm the soundtrack, a splash of red flowers on the fence suddenly appears, as if the film itself were offering you a garland.
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- This film was #78 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025