In his first collaboration with David Byrne and Brian Eno, Conner used footage from educational films to create a rhythmically austere imagetrack for music from their pioneering “sampling” album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). Program notes courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive. Special thanks to Jean Conner, Michelle Silva of the Conner Estate, and Bruce Jenkins, Henrietta Zielinski and Thomas Hodge of SAIC. Silva and Bruce Jenkins, co-curator for the Walker Art Center’s exhibition, 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II, will be present for an audience discussion after Friday’s screening. These two programs survey Conner’s 50-year career and include a rare public screening of SAIC’s own print of Marilyn Times Three (1972), an early version of what would eventually become Marilyn Times Five (1973), which is also included in the tribute, affording an extraordinary opportunity to view Conner’s working style.įilmmaker Michelle Silva, representative of the Conner Family Trust will be present for an audience discussion after Thursday’s screening. He extended his propulsive approach to editing into innovative collaborations with numerous pop musicians, including the singer Toni Basil ( Breakaway, 1966), David Byrne and Brian Eno ( Mea Culpa, 1981 and America Is Waiting, 1981), and DEVO ( Mongoloid, 1978), as well as with minimalist composer Terry Riley in Looking for Mushrooms (1996) and the monumental Crossroads (1976). Conner began making films in the late 1950s by piecing together scraps of newsreels, stag movies, and Castle novelty films into viscerally edited fever dreams that illuminated the shadow-world of America’s subconscious such as A Movie (1958) and Report (1967), and later, into lyrical assemblages of mystery and nostalgic longing, such as Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977) and Valse Triste (1979). Image courtesy of the Conner Family Trust.Įxplosive, elegiac, and ecstatic, the films of Bruce Conner (1933-2008) have had an enormous impact on film and pop culture, echoing through the rhythms of MTV, on-line remixes, and the use of found footage in art and cinema around the globe. Thursday, April 16 & Friday, April 17, 6pm | Guests in person! Bruce Conner, A Movie (1958).
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