Conner's Crossroads and The Exploding Digital Inevitable

  • 86'
  • USA
  • 2016

The centerpiece of this project is Crossroads, Bruce Conner’s 36-minute assemblage of US government footage of the iconic Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test, the single most recorded event in human history (500 cameras). As an archivist, Lipman carried out the 4K restoration of the film, a highlight in the currently travelling Conner career retrospective. This restoration involved a multi-tiered strategy of versioning, with different iterations intentionally created for different media forms and exhibition contexts.
Parallel to this type of laboratory work, Lipman also creates his own films and documentaries, most notably last year’s celebrated Notfilm, an insightful outcome of his restoration work on Samuel Beckett’s FILM. Stylistically the approach here is very similar, but with live narration, integrating an array of movie and audio clips, still photographs, and rare archival documents that tell the story of Crossroads' unique production, as well as the massive cultural spectacle of the original Bikini Atoll tests and mankind’s drive to self-destruct.

Directors
Ross Lipman, Bruce Conner
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
USA
Year
2016
Festival Edition
IFFR 2017
Length
86'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producer
Ross Lipman
Production Company
corpusfluxus
Sales
corpusfluxus, The Conner Family Trust
Screenplay
Ross Lipman
Editor
Ross Lipman, Bruce Conner
Music
Patrick Gleeson, Terry Riley, Guru Prasanna
Directors
Ross Lipman, Bruce Conner
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
USA
Year
2016
Festival Edition
IFFR 2017
Length
86'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producer
Ross Lipman
Production Company
corpusfluxus
Sales
corpusfluxus, The Conner Family Trust
Screenplay
Ross Lipman
Editor
Ross Lipman, Bruce Conner
Music
Patrick Gleeson, Terry Riley, Guru Prasanna