Événement

Breakaway: Films By Bruce Conner

(16mm and DigiBeta, 70 min) We are proud to present a sampling of Bruce Conner's greatest films, celebrating what would have been his 77th birthday. A painter, sculptor and collagist, Conner is perhaps best remembered as among the most importantand delightfulexperimental filmmakers of the late 20th century. Often juxtaposing dark humor with pure visionary joy, his found-footage films A Movie (1959) and Cosmic Ray (1961) are acknowledged landmarks that were later adopted wholesale by the '80s underground. Music films like Devo's Mongoloid (1978) mocked MTV's hyper-consumerism even as it was gestating, while later works such as Valse Triste (1979) and Looking for Mushrooms (1995), used personal footage toward a more lyrical approach. Don't miss this rare screening of Conner's films, all unavailable on DVD.

"Bruce Conner's ecstatic films...were at once salvage projects and assertions of individuality in an increasingly anonymous age. In their modest way...they were acts of resistance, an aesthetic rejoinder to a world drowning in its own image. Just as important, they are generally a blastwitty, exuberant, despairing, engaged, apocalyptic."Manhola Dargis, New York Times

Presented by Northwest Film Forum, The Sprocket Society and Third Eye Cinema