Cosmic Ray
Bruce Conner US, 1961, 4', 16 mm
Cosmic Ray seems like a reckless collage of fast moving parts: comic strips, dancing girls, flashing lights. It is the dancing girl - hardly dressed, stripping or nude - which provides the leitmotiv for the film. Again and again she appears - sandwiched between soldiers, guns, and even death in the form of a skull positioned between her legs. And if the statement equates sex with destruction, the cataclysm is a brilliant one, like an exploding firecracker, and one which ends the world with a cosmic bang. Of course, the title also refers to musician Ray Charles whose art Conner visually transcribes onto film as a potent reality, tough and penetrating in its ability to affect some pretty basic animal instincts. But if such is the content of the film - that much of our behavior consists of bestiality - the work as a whole stands as insight rather than indictment. (Carl Belz)
Photo: Conner Family Trust
Fri 28/9 Kino SC 20:00
