Image of movie Cosmic Ray
Image of movie Cosmic Ray
Retrospektive

Cosmic Ray

Bruce Conner
USA 1961
4 min
V'20

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) war eine der Schlüsselfiguren der US-Avantgarde im Allgemeinen und des Found-Footage-Films im Besonderen. Mit seinem lapidar-genial betitelten und bahnbrechenden Debüt A MOVIE eröffnete er der Collage von unterschiedlichem Filmmaterial neue Dimensionen. Dieses virtuos zu Ottorino Respighis Musik rhythmisierte Arrangement vor allem von Action-Katastrophen demonstriert in der parodistischen Übersteigerung des Infernos auch Conners Sinn für Humor und beeinflusste Generationen von Regisseuren bis in die Musikvideo-Ära (zu der Conner etwa mit MONGOLOID für Devo beitrug). Übertroffen wurde die Raserei allerdings, wenn überhaupt, nur von Conner selbst in COSMIC RAY: “the whole world in five minutes”. Ganz andere Seiten von Conners Kunst demonstrieren REPORT (Kennedy-Attentat und Konsumismus-Kritik) und das meditative Meisterwerk CROSSROADS, das aus extrem verlangsamten Aufnahmen von Atombombentests ein schrecklich-schönes Mandala der Apokalypse gestaltet. (C.H.)

Bruce Conner remains one of the key figures of the American avantgarde in general and the found footage film in particular. His debut film A MOVIE – made without a camera at the age of 25 – remains a touchstone for the use of appropriated film material. Conner’s collage of mostly catastrophic action footage (car crashes, torpedo launches, explosive wrecks), interspersed with bits of sex, to the score of Ottorino Respighi’s symphonic “Pines of Rome,” and taken mostly from newsreels and B-pictures, showcased both his sense of humor (by stretching the inferno to parodist proportions) as well as his spiritual side (despite the absurdity, there is also something eerie about the pile-up of calamities). The influence of A MOVIE cannot be overstated, although probably only Conner himself surpassed its frenetic splendor: with COSMIC RAY, a self-avowed attempt to squeeze “the whole world in[to] five minutes” to the irresistible drive of Ray Charles performing “What I’d Say.” Conner clearly also anticipated the era of music videos to which he would contribute, e.g. with MONGOLOID (for Devo) and AMERICA IS WAITING (for Brian Eno and David Byrne).
But Conner pursued very different directions in his rich body of work. Two key examples would be REPORT (which takes the JFK assassination as a basis for a corrosive critique of consumerism, USstyle), and especially Conner’s masterpiece CROSSROADS, which presents footage from the eponymous nuclear weapons testing program at Bikini Atoll in 1946 in extreme slow motion: a meditation on the apocalypse that is simultaneously horrifying and beautiful, as well as a cinematic counterpart to the many mandalas Conner produced in his parallel career in the fine arts. (Christoph Huber)

Alle Retrospektiven-Filme, die nach der Viennale – ab dem 2.11. – im Filmmuseum gezeigt werden, können selbstverständlich auch wie gewohnt auf www.filmmuseum.at oder unter Tel. 01/533 70 54 reserviert und an der Kassa des Österreichischen Filmmuseum gekauft werden. Es gelten die Preise des Filmmuseums.

Credits
Bruce Conner

The Conner Family Trust

16 mm
SW
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