Eye and Ear Clinic at SAIC (112
S Michigan Ave, Rm 1307) - Monday, 6pm
One of the great accidents of Art History
is that Bruce Conner did not invent the found-footage film. Sure, Joseph
Cornell made ROSE HOBART in 1936 and Eisenstein et al were rumored to
have rearranged THE BIRTH OF A NATION while teaching themselves the
art of montage in the 1910s, but Conner did it better. In his first
major film, simply titled A MOVIE (1958, 12 min, 16mm) he displayed
a knack for gluing the scraps of civilization together to create both
a humorous and scathing visual commentary on society at large and Hollywood
idioms. As the title indicates, this was a generalized version of the
more mind-numbing fare that is arguably still the norm: sex, explosions,
racism, and sexy racist explosions. In REPORT (1967, 13 min, 16mm) he
used the news coverage surrounding the Kennedy assassination, shot off
his own TV set, to explore the media's obsession with violence and celebrity.
Again Conner uses a medium of mass communication as the message, but
shows more sensitivity as he explores his own feelings about an event
that defined a generation. Craig Baldwin's TRIBULATION 99 (1992, 48
min, 16mm) is a film that is epic in scope and archival in source material.
Taking a different approach to appropriation, Baldwin braids 99 different
conspiracy theories into a narrative. With footage mainly from B-movie
clips and educational films, he explains in half-whispered narration
not just who killed JFK, but what it had to do with the Mayans and aliens.
Baldwin shows a sensitivity to the societal fringes that incubated these
theories, and you get the sense that although he doesn't believe them,
he knows they're onto something. Also screening: Brian Boyce's SPECIAL
REPORT (1999, 3 min, video), Kent Lambert's SEPTEMBER SICK SEMPER TYRANNIS
(2008, 4 min, video), and Jesse McLean's ONLY WE KNOW (2009, 5 min,
video). Lambert and McLean person. JH - Cine-File.info
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