Bruce Conner, the Last Magician of the 20th Century
Program One
Channeling the “black magic” of Ray Charles’ music, Conner used occult symbols and mysterious images to create this nocturnal and raucous masterpiece.
In his first collaboration with David Byrne and Brian Eno, Conner used footage from educational films to create a rhythmically austere image-track for music from their pioneering “sampling” album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981).
The ultimate found footage film, A MOVIE summarizes—and critiques—the history of modern cinema in just twelve minutes.
Conner’s response to structural cinema is at turns hilarious and sad, appropriating the strained performance of Marilyn Monroe imitator Arline Hunter.
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Vivian
Directed by Bruce Conner.
US, 1964, 16mm, black & white, 4 min.
An ecstatic portrait of actress Vivian Kurtz that features footage of a 1964 Conner exhibition and couches a humorous critique of the art market.
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Ten Second Film
Directed by Bruce Conner.
US, 1965, 16mm, black & white, silent.
Conner created a ten second scandal with this very short film, commissioned by the New York Film Festival as a “trailer” and promptly rejected for being simply “too fast.”
An oneiric, autobiographic chapter in Conner’s cinema with a mysterious, evocative soundtrack by Patrick Gleeson.
A lyrical companion piece to 5:10, this poetic found-footage memoir counts as one of Conner’s most intimate films.
Conner returned to his first color footage of travels in Mexico and his early years in San Francisco, radically slowing down the original material—by adding five frames per shot—to craft a spellbinding and hypnotic superimposition of two worlds.