Unearthly Poetic Visions: The Complete Will Hindle

“I see one or two films a year—I don’t have the time.” – Will Hindle

The colorful, quirky style that is associated with the members of the West Coast experimental film scene has long been defined by the foundational work of Bruce Baillie, Robert Nelson, and Pat O’Neill. Despite being every bit as critical to that scene’s origins and their subversions of New Age aesthetics, the small body of work that Will Hindle (1929-87) left behind has frequently resulted in many of his 11 films being far more discussed than seen. The increasing rarity of prints in good condition has further contributed to a certain obscurity, despite praise from writers such as Amos Vogel and Gene Youngblood. Happily, the breadth and depth of his work has experienced something of a revival in appreciation, with Joshua Minsoo Kim of Tone Glow putting together the first complete retrospective of Hindle’s filmography, Unknown Nostalgia, at Chicago’s Sweet Void Cinema in December 2024.

Spectacle is proud to bring its own variation on the second-ever complete Hindle retrospective, functioning as both the first in New York City and the first opportunity to watch all 11 of his films in chronological order. This retrospective encompasses nearly 30 years of filmmaking, with all his films shown on 16mm prints and several being presented via the sole distributable prints in good condition. Gene Youngblood declared Hindle as possessing “an uncanny ability for transforming unstylized reality into unearthly poetic visions,” and “[an] ability to invest a technical device with emotional or metaphysical content [that] is truly impressive.” NYC audiences will now be able to appreciate the technical assurance and beauty behind these poetic visions.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana and possessing a talent for drawings; Will Hindle served two terms in the U.S. Air Force during WWII and was given his own cartoon feature for the Stars & Stripes military newspaper during his service. This led to him becoming the youngest-ever animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, before he transitioned to making hundreds of short interstitial programs for CBS/Westinghouse. He used this job to finance the majority of his personal cinema throughout the majority of his filmmaking career, having fallen into Bruce Baillie’s social circles and subsequently becoming increasingly convinced that any art motivated by commercial purposes was fundamentally corrupt and impersonal. He eventually moved down South again and became a teacher at the University of South Florida in 1972, resulting in him only completing two more films before a history of compounding health issues led to his premature passing at age 58, shortly after finally completing his final film Trekkerriff. Despite being gay, he had a long-time partnership of sorts with fellow filmmaker Shellie Fleming, who played a critical role in passing on his legacy to future generations via her subsequent work as a teacher at Chicago’s Art Institute.

Hindle’s technical range expanded over the course of his career (with the CBS work as a training ground), and he managed to innovate cost-saving methods that allowed him a greater degree of control, as detailed by Youngblood: “He shoots original scenes with wide-angle lenses, then ‘crops’ them by projecting and rephotographing this footage using a special single-frame projector. Thus extremely subtle effects are achieved that would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, if done through conventional laboratory optical printing.” His sensual and psychedelic visuals tended to involve homoeroticism and humor, he took the design of his countdown leader and title cards as seriously as the substance of the movies, and he remained committed to exclusively making sound films across his entire body of work. These films are best seen big and loud, and this is a chance to do just that from beginning to end.