"... 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
1958, 16mm, b&w/so, 12min, $60
"COSMIC RAY seems like a reckless collage of fast moving parts: comic strips, dancing girls, flashing lights. It is the dancing girl - hardly dressed, stripping or nude - which provides the leitmotiv for the film. Again and again she appears - sandwiched between soldiers, guns, and even death in the form of a skull positioned between her legs. And if the statement equates sex with destruction, the cataclysm is a brilliant one, like an exploding firecracker, and one which ends the world with a cosmic bang. Of course, the title also refers to musician Ray Charles whose art Conner visually transcribes onto film as a potent reality, tough and penetrating in its ability to affect some pretty basic animal instincts. But if such is the content of the film - that much of our behavior consists of bestiality - the work as a whole stands as insight rather than indictment."
- Carl Belz, Film Culture
Frame enlargement by Dominic Angerame.
1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 4min, $40
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.
1966, 16mm, b&w/so, 5min, $40
Filmed from TV set 1963-1964 by Bruce Conner - Patrick Gleeson music: 1995 - Lee Harvey Oswald - View from window, Texas School Book Depository - Eternal Flame, Arlington National Cemetery - President Kennedy - Funeral Flowers at Dealey Plaza, Dallas - Kennedy Inaugural Parade - PT 109 Official Warren Commission Report - Texas School Book Depository - Kennedy Motorcade - Mail Order Bolt Action Rifle - Oswald in custody - Jack Ruby shoots Oswald - TV roll bars - multiple exposures - Lincoln Memorial - chalk board diagrams - White House - military guard at Kennedy grave - Baked Turkey commercial for Thanksgiving Day Dinner - Oswald - et cetera.
"A remarkable film. The score by Patrick Gleeson is every bit as effective as his pieces for earlier Bruce Conner films and transforms the experience of seeing these familiar - but also transfixing - images. The humor that leavens the genuine sadness of the material is given gentle boosts here and there acoustically."
- Bruce Jenkins, Director, Film/Video, Walker Art Center
1963-1995, 16mm, b&w/so, 14min, $65
Frame enlargement by Dominic Angerame.
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
1967, 16mm, b&w/so, 7min, $45
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
(c) 1977 DEVO
1978, 16mm, b&w/so, 3.5min, $35
Music by Terry Riley: "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band," 1968 - BMA - Publisher: Ancient Word Music.
This is the same film footage as edited in the earlier short version of LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS released in 1968 with a Beatles soundtrack. It is made longer with five frames for each original frame but still remains the same edit (but with a new soundtrack by Terry Riley) and nothing added, nothing lost, always the same, never ending ....
Award: Best Experimental Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1997
1996, 16mm, color/so, 14.5min, $70