Inspired by a lesson from Erik Satie; a film in the form of a street – Castro Street running by the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California … switch engines on one side and refinery tanks, stacks and buildings on the other – the street and film, ending at a red lumber company. All visual and sound elements from the street, progressing from the beginning to the end of the street, one side is black-and-white (secondary), and one side is colour – like male and female elements. The emergence of a long switch-engine shot (black-and-white solo) is to the filmmaker the essential of consciousness. —IMDb
Bruce Baillie (born in 1931, Aberdeen, South Dakota) is an American experimental filmmaker and founding member of Canyon Cinema in San Francisco. His film Castro Street (1966) was selected in 1992 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. —Wikipedia
It makes me think of a "street symphony" considering the genre "city symphonies"!
it's too bad the phrase "moving painting" is so overused, because this is the kind of film to which the term truly applies. "castro street" finds a very focused balance between sensual abstraction and the ephemera of the railroad itself. beautiful.