Bruce Conner
- 1958A Movie
- 1967Report
- 1976Crossroads
Fed intoThe music video
He cut newsreels, B-movies and countdown leader to pop music, two decades before MTV made it a format.
Conner was a sculptor and painter first, known for assemblages built from nylon, wax and junk. He brought the same instinct to film: A Movie is made almost entirely from found footage, stock shots and countdown leader, cut to Respighi into something funny, then terrifying.
Report replays the Kennedy assassination radio coverage against a stutter of images until the spectacle curdles. Crossroads slows the 1946 Bikini Atoll nuclear test footage into a long, terrible beauty.
He also cut films to records by Devo, Brian Eno and David Byrne, and many people count them among the first music videos. He died in 2008.
Films
Where to start with Bruce Conner, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
A Movie
Countdown leader, stock footage, newsreel disasters and a submarine periscope, cut to Respighi's Pines of Rome. It starts as a joke and ends somewhere else.
Still from Cosmic Ray to come. Cosmic Ray
A strobing collage of a nude dancer, fireworks, military footage and Mickey Mouse, cut to Ray Charles's What'd I Say.
Report
Made between 1963 and 1967 from radio and television coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination, repeated and broken up until the coverage itself becomes the subject.
Crossroads
The 1946 Bikini Atoll underwater nuclear test, seen again and again from different cameras, with music by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley.
Echoed in
Where Conner's ideas turned up next.
