Bruce Conner

Easter Morning (2008)

Departing from an inimitable film repertoire of tour-de-force editing technique, visual comedy, and apocalyptic themes, avant-garde master Bruce Conner envisioned EASTER MORNING (2008)—a metaphysical quest for renewal beyond the natural and ephemeral wor ...

His Eye Is on the Sparrow (2006)

16mm/Digital, color/b&w/sound Bruce Conner began working on By and By a documentary about The Soul Stirrers several decades ago shooting their reunion concert with four cameras and accumulating interview material. Conner was poised to finish the piece in ...

Three Screen Ray (2006)

A three screen projection comprised of imagery from COSMIC RAY (1961) and EVE-RAY-FOREVER (1965). ...

Looking for Mushrooms (1996)

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959-1967) is a psychedelic travelogue film that documents a series of "trips" through rural Mexico and urban America. Conner combined street views of San Francisco shot in the late 1950s with scenes of rural Oaxaca captured during h ...

Mea Culpa (1981)

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). ...

America Is Waiting (1981)

Stock footage edited with music to comment on American culture. ...

Mongoloid (1978)

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 mal ...

Valse Triste (1977)

With a similar dreamy mood like its predecessor "Take the 5:10 to Dreamland" (1976) this clip starts with a boy getting into his bed. The camera zooms in into the boy's mind and a slow, sad waltz (i.e."Valse Triste") accompanies images of a locomotive, a m ...

Crossroads (1976)

The 1945 atomic-bomb explosion at Bikini Atoll becomes a thing of terrible beauty and haunting visual poetry when shown in extreme slow motion, shown from 27 different angles, and accompanied by avant-garde Western classical music composed for electric org ...

Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1976)

Its slow somnambulic rhythm, its animalistic jungle sounds as well as the eerily mixed images create a dream mood that comes closest to my actual dreaming-feeling. The long black phases between the sequences are as important as the images themselves becaus ...

Television Assassination (1975)

TELEVISION ASSASSINATION is one of two major works that Bruce Conner began in the days immediately following the Kennedy assassination and the artist's own thirtieth birthday, in the fall of 1963. While REPORT utilized montage and a strongly articulated st ...

Marilyn Times Five (1973)

A commentary on the destructive expectations of females in a male dominated society, Marilyn Times Five was made from an old stag film called "The Apple-Knockers, and the Coke"(1948) these sections of the film were set to Marilyn Monroe's song "I'm Through ...

Permian Strata (1969)

A film he made in 1969 that rarely gets discussed, and is only barely mentioned even in the monograph 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II. This excellent tome contains close analysis by Bruce Jenkins of film-school staples like A Movie and Looking For ...

Antonia Christina Basilotta (1968)

In 1968, Bruce Conner offered this film comprised of the unedited footage of Toni Basil dancing, footage that was previously edited down in 1966 to create the film Breakaway. ...

Looking for Mushrooms (1967)

During his year in Mexico, Conner hosted psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who he had met on an earlier visit to New York. Conner and Leary occupied themselves with mushroom hunts in the Mexican countryside. It's not clear whether their hunts were successful ...

The White Rose (1967)

Jay De Feo started painting THE WHITE ROSE in 1957. When the unfinished painting was removed eight years later it weighed over 2300 pounds. ...

Breakaway (1967)

Breakaway plays out like a visual symphony. A prototype for the best (but still, lesser) contemporary formalist music videos, like Peter Care's "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and "Drive" (both for REM), Conner's movie is an experiment in the visual langu ...

Easter Morning Raga (1967)

Report (1967)

Bruce Conner's most celebrated film for a reason: it takes historical moments that were replayed over and over on television—chilling repetition of Kennedy assassination coverage—and repurposes them into a meditation on how the media tries to exert aut ...

Luke (1967)

A short film created during the production of Cool Hand Luke. ...

Liberty Crown (1967)

From KQED kinescope with Michael McClure (No longer extant). ...

Ten Second Film (1965)

An advertisement for the New York Film Festival which the Festival rejected as being "too fast. ...

Vivian (1965)

"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 f ...

Eve-Ray-Forever (1965)

EVE-RAY-FOREVER is a silent, three-screen expanded version of COSMIC RAY (1961). Originally exhibited as an 8mm Technicolor looped installation at the Rose Art Museum in 1965, it was digitally restored in 2006 by Conner in close collaboration with his edit ...

Cosmic Ray (1962)

Experimental short uses Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" as accompaniment to constantly shifting collage of female nude, cartoons, and newsreels of atomic bomb explosions. ...

A Movie (1958)

Bruce Conner's landmark experimental film consisting entirely of found footage edited to a new score. ...

Dennis Hopper: The Decisive Moments (2004)

The inevitable fat cigar between his fingers, the American actor, director and fine artist Dennis Hopper (1936) self-mockingly looks back on his chequered life and career, at the request of Dutch director, photographer and fine artist Thom Hoffman. The lat ...

Battle Stations – A Navel Adventure (2002)

Starring Bruce Conner, a belly dancer, a geiger counter, and a toxic waste dump. ...

Birth of a Nation (1997)

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own "nation of cinema," a vital ...

The Kitchen Presents: Two Moon July (1986)

Two Moon July was a multidisciplinary event that featured experimental video, film, visual art, performance and music in a theatrical framework. More than thirty artists participated in the program, which was produced for the Kitchen by Carlota Schoolman a ...

Underground New York (1968)

A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York "underground" in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties r ...

Me & Bruce & Art (1967)

Bay Area filmmakers and Canyon Cinema co-founders Ben Van Meter and Bruce Conner were invited to L.A. to talk about Underground Film on the Art Linkletter Show. ...

Pas de Trois (1964)

A short film documenting the making of Bruce Conner's Breakaway. ...