Bruce Conner - The master of Found Footage Film
"Bruce Conner has been an original influence and innovator for thousands of film makers since 1958. His films, like several others available from Canyon Cinema, have changed the way that film and video productions are seen today. A MOVIE, 1958, is listed in the Library of Congress National Registry of Film, his first video tape production was presented on KQED-TV San Francisco in 1967 and a recent Telluride Film Festival program and symposium was titled: "From Bruce Conner To MTV." His earliest films using rapid-fire editing techniques, compilation footage and the wedding of sound or music to picture have had an enduring effect on motion picture media throughout the world. His influence through so many levels of visual media has remained "underground," because of the unique character of his work, to the point where many individuals are not aware of the original source. The unique qualities of Bruce Conner's work is true independent film: one person concept, production, editing, filming, etc. They exploit the economic poverty of production cost by transforming the detritus and "defects" of the media from base lead into gold by the classic alchemy of creative art. Starting October 1999, a solo exhibition of Bruce Conner works will be exhibited at four museums starting with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis featuring some of the many media that Bruce Conner has mastered: painting, sculpture, drawing, conceptual works, prints, assemblage, collage, photography as well as 8mm and 16mm films. Each film is a feature film even if it is ten seconds long. The title for the show is 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story: Part 2. It is one of a series of seven exhibitions that will ultimately survey his entire collection of dust and badges."
- P.F. McMoon
A Movie (1958), 16mm, b&w/so, 12m
Bruce.Conner.1958_a_movie.mpg
"... a montage of found materials from fact (newsreels) and fiction (old movies). Cliches and horrors make a rapid collage in which destruction and sex follow each other in images of pursuit and falling until finally a diver disappears through a hole in the bottom of the sea - the ultimate exit. The entire thing is prefaced by a girl from a shady movie lazily undressing. By the time A MOVIE is over she has retrospectively become a Circe or Prime Mover." - Brian O'Doherty, The New York Times
"Using only found footage, Conner has created one of the most extraordinary films ever made. One begins by laughing at the juxtaposition of cowboys and Indians, elephants and tanks, but soon the metaphor of association becomes serious, as we realize we are witnessing the apocalypse." - Freude
Vivian (1964), 16mm, b&w/so, 3m
Vivian (Bruce Conner, 1965).mpg
"A film portrait cut to the tune of Conway Twitty's version of 'Mona Lisa.' Filmed in part at a 1964 show of Conner's artwork in San Francisco, the film is also a witty statement about forces that take the life out of art. Vivian Kurz, the subject of the film, is entombed in a glass display case." - Judd Chesler
Da Vinci thought he caught her smiling.
Ten Second Film (1965), 16mm, b&w/si, 10sec
1965_ten_second_film.avi
"When Conner was commissioned to design the poster for the 1965 New York Film Festival he constructed TEN SECOND FILM, which he intended to act as its television commercial and to precede the film programs in the theater. It was a public 'Leader' in that it was composed, like the poster, of a series of ten strips of film (each 24 frames long) of count-down leader, seen as fundamental heraldry of motion picture exhibition. The leaders of the Festival, however, felt it was too risky to submit the public to this secret image of their heritage." - Anthony Reveaux
One reason the festival gave for rejecting the film was it "went too fast." It travels the right speed: 24 frames per second. 240. Count 'em.
Report (1963-1967), 16mm, b&w/so, 13m
Bruce Conner - Report (1967).avi
"Society thrives on violence, destruction, and death no matter how hard we try to hide it with immaculately clean offices, the worship of modern science, or the creation of instant martyrs. From the bullfight arena to the nuclear arena we clamor for the spectacle of destruction. The crucial link in REPORT is that JFK with his great PT 109 was just as much a part of the destruction game as anyone else. Losing is a big part of playing games." - David Mosen, Film Quarterly
"Conner is the most brilliant film-editor of the avant-garde. In REPORT he has used newsreel footage and radio tapes of President Kennedy's assassination to produce a thirteen minute movie that captures unbearably, yet exhilaratingly, the tragic absurdity of that day." - Jack Kroll, Newsweek
Breakaway (1966), 16mm, b&w/so, 5m
Bruce Conner - Breakaway (1966).avi
Music by Ed Cobb. Dance and vocal by Toni Basil (Antonia Christina Basilotta).
"The camera captures her movements in gestural, expressive light smears. Intercut rhythmically with strophes of black leader, she gyrates in graceful, stroboscopic accelerations. Conner's editing is consummate as he alternates angles of her figure from different shots into a kinesthetic, flowing continuity.
"Basically a two-and-a-half minute film, this 'module' of image and sound is then reversed. Everything goes 'backwards' to the 'original' beginning. The sound track with Basilotta singing the title song is run in reverse as an aural analogue to the visual abstraction of photography. It resembles a paradigm for those high school physics demonstrations of gravitation where we saw a ball, once thrown straight up into the air, loyally retrace its trajectory to Earth." - Anthony Reveaux
A dance film viewed twice (once forward, once backward) in five minutes. The film was shot at single frame exposures as well as 8, 16, 24 and 36 frames per second.
The White Rose (1967), 16mm, b&w/so, 7m
Bruce Conner - The White Rose (1967).mpg
Jay De Feo started painting THE WHITE ROSE in 1957. When the unfinished painting was removed eight years later it weighed over 2300 pounds.
"The images selected and the order constructed become a formal mystic service. We see the altar, the penitence, the cross, the investiture, the descent, and finally, the mourning. The men in garments from Bekins seem to draw strength from touching the surface. The respect they render the painting appears as worship." - Camille Cook
"... a fine, brief, tongue-in-cheek 'documentary' of a huge painting being removed from an artist's studio, carried onto a Bekin's moving van with a combination of cold efficiency and all the lugubrious solemnity of a state funeral. It has remarkable timing and pace, and an 'artless' style which can only come from a deep sense of what the art is all about." - Tom Albright, Rolling Stone
Permian Strata (1969), 16mm, b&w/so, 4m
Bruce.Conner.1969_permian_strata.mpg
Sound effects by Robert Zimmerman.
"Because film is a medium that trades in gradations of light and dark, Conner often interjects clear frames or flash frames - the degeneration of the image into pure cinematic information. The 'hero' of PERMIAN STRATA, like modern man habituated to visual media, must respond to truth, not as 'the word,' but as LIGHT. A biblical tyrant is confronted with the truth and finds that he can't handle it.
"The style of STRATA marks a departure from Conner's earlier collage forms. Conner chooses the significant footage from the found film and simply sets it off against the music. There's no cutting between the scenes." - Judd Chesler "Scientists know that occasional interludes of violence overtook the earth. One such time of crisis was the Permian Age." - Leonard Engel, The Sea
Marilyn Times Five (1968-1973), 16mm, b&w/so, 13.5m
Bruce Conner - Marilyn Times Five (1973).mpg
With Arline Hunter.
"A young woman, allegedly Marilyn Monroe, is seen with pitiless scrutiny in the arena of an old girlie film. The reiteration of five cycles rotates the commodity of her moon-pale body as her song repeats five times on the sound track ... 'I'm through with love.' The last shot terminates a final reward of stillness as she is seen crumpled on the floor." - Anthony Reveaux
The image, or Anima, of Marilyn Monroe was not owned by Norma Jean any more than it was owned by Arline Hunter. Images can sometimes have more power than the person they represent. Some cultures consider that an image steals the soul or spirit of the person depicted. They will dwindle and die. MX5 is an equation not intended to be completed by the film alone. The viewer completes the equation.
Crossroads (1976), 16mm, b&w/so, 36m
Bruce Conner - Crossroads (1976).avi
Original music by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley.
"Conner bases his film on government footage of the first underwater A-bomb test, July 25, 1946, at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Recorded at speeds ranging from normal to super slow motion, the same explosion is seen 27 different times - from the air, from boats and land-based cameras; distant and close-up. The opening segment emphasizes the awesome grandeur of the explosion - the destructiveness, as well as the dramatic spectacle and beauty. As the repetition builds, however, the explosion is gradually removed from the realm of historic phenomena, assuming the dimensions of a universal, cosmic force. And in the film's second section this force is brought into a kind of cosmic harmony, part of the lyrically indifferent ebb and flow of life that one sees in a lingering, elegaic view of the ocean." - Thomas Albright, San Francisco Chronicle
Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977), 16mm, sepia/so, 5.5m
Bruce Conner - Take The 5_10 To Dreamland (1976).avi
Music by Patrick Gleeson.
"... it contains very few images but Bruce Conner collages them in ecstatic orders and they work in miraculous ways. The film has no real subject, at least not one immediately visible. It's just a series of images - a canal, a road, a mysterious white receding shape, a girl with a ball in front of a mirror, a slow motion water splash, some clouds. The film is tinted soft brown.
"... the state produced by a film like 5:10 TO DREAMLAND is very similar to the feeling produced by a poem. The images, their mysterious relationships, the rhythm, and the connections impress themselves upon the unconscious. The film ends, like a poem ends, almost like a puff, like nothing. And you sit there, in silence, letting it all sink deeper, and then you stand up and you know that it was very, very good." - Jonas Mekas, The Soho Weekly News
Mongoloid (1978), 16mm, b&w/so, 3.5m
Bruce Conner - 1978 Mongoloid.mpg
A documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society. Insightful editing techniques reveal the dreams, ideals and problems that face a large segment of the American male population. Educational. Background music written and performed by the DEVO orchestra.
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, happier than you and me.
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, and it determined what he could see.
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, one chromosome too many.
And he wore a hat, and he had a job
And he brought home the bacon so that no one knew
Valse Triste (1979), 16mm, b&w/so, 5m
Valse.Triste.1977.Bruce.Conner.[G鰐tersturm.DivX].avi
"VALSE TRISTE is frankly and gracefully autobiographical of Conner's Kansas boyhood. Here, the period of the 1940s of his source materials parallels his own life experiences.
"A line of dark, wet cars files across a flooded road; a man and a boy ceremoniously burn leaves; a businessman at his desk turns to look over his shoulder to the photo of a locomotive on the wall behind him; a medium shot of an engineer in the cab of his locomotive; a shard of rock shears from a quarry wall and plunges into water ...." - Anthony Reveaux
Nostalgic recreation of dreamland Kansas 1947 in Toto. Theme music from I Love a Mystery radio programs (Jack, Doc, and Reggie confront the enigmatic lines of railroad trains, sheep, black cars, women exercising in an open field, grandma at the farm ...) Meanwhile, 13-year-old boy confronts reality. Sibelius grows old in Finland and becomes a national monument.
America Is Waiting (1982), 16mm, b&w/so, 3.5m
Bruce Conner - 1982 America Is Waiting.mpg
Music by David Byrne and Brian Eno.
"The lyrics of AMERICA IS WAITING: 'Well now, you can't blame the people - blame the government! Take it in again! Again! Again! America is waiting for a message of some kind or another,' cued Conner for a strongly structured and richly varied piece which examines ideas of loyalty, power, patriotism and paranoia.
"Like most of Bruce Conner's films, repeated viewings yield deeper layers of successive structures. AMERICA IS WAITING is strongly composed of interlocking visual connections, emblematic content and a resonating ambiguity of the human condition within the constructs with which we confound ourselves." - Anthony Reveaux, monograph on Bruce Conner published by Film in the Cities
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