34: Report

            At 13 minutes, I believe avant-garde filmmaker Bruce Conner’s Report (1967), is the second briefest movie in the 1001 canon (bested in this category only by the list’s second title, The Great Train Robbery (1902)).  The film was made as a response to the Kennedy assassination in the fall of 1963, and contains both network news footage of the event and local coverage, as well as numerous images related to the shooting only through Conner’s use of editing.   

One would suppose that the popular fascination with these events, as well as the film’s short runtime, would, in this modern world of YouTube, make it one of the easiest titles on the list to view.  Not so.  In fact, to see the film (which apart from one incredibly rare DVD release is only available on 16mm) I had to travel to the Windy City, where one of the technicians at the School of the Art Institute was kind enough to screen it for me.   Of course, upon my return and my subsequent sitting down to write this blog, I found it posted in plain sight online when I Googled “Bruce Conner’s Report.”

Minor frustration aside, here it is:  http://www.stickam.com/viewMedia.do?mId=192157747

I’ll let you experience it for yourself, as I think any dedicated film fan should, but I will give you some background.  Conner started recording the live TV coverage of the assassination on super 8 almost immediately.  He was primarily drawn to the event as he was living in Kennedy’s birthplace, Brookline, MA, throughout that fall.  He stated after the film’s release that he used the project as a way of dealing with the tragedy, commenting on the events and the media sensation they created while trying to come to grips with the myriad emotions they both generated.  

Conner screened his initial cut of the picture to the Harvard film society in 1964.  Working with funds from a Ford Foundation grant, he subsequently created at least six different versions of the film, each the same length, before completing the work in ’67.  Conner often said that he felt as though finishing was admitting that the assassination was in fact a reality.

This is a moving film on numerous levels.  It was made available 8 years before the (in)famous Zapruder footage was shown on television, and it thus captures and casts the tragedy in a unique light.  With his editing technique, Conner manages to be both reverent and humorous in his short time with the viewer.  Report is in many ways the “Holy Grail” of found footage films and ironically, up until its recent posting, it was difficult to find. 

I’m glad I took the trip to Chicago regardless.  To see Report with the clicking of the projector behind me was unique and rewarding (take that, internet).  I also had to the chance to peek into the Flaxman Library’s stacks of 16mm prints.  The collection currently sits in limbo between availability and archive status, and screenings have to be scheduled, but contained on those shelves was enough movie gold to make any cinefile weak in the knees.  With Report I only scratched the surface.

For much more in-depth criticism of the film, check out Adrian Danks’ (Lecturer of Media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) 2009 article in Senses of Cinema : http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/cteq/report/.  

Language: English

Runtime: 13 Minutes

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off