BREAKAWAY

[youtube]http://youtu.be/5CHtEASlzG8[/youtube]

Shot at multiple speeds (and forwards and backwards), Conner's dance film of dancer and choreographer Toni Basil uses incredible rapid-fire montage to deliver a beautifully frenzied response to Maya Deren's motion studies. Basil herself became an accomplished music video director & star. Dennis Hopper described the experience of seeing Conner’s A MOVIE (1958) like lifting the veil from his eyes, an associative blur of images that would go on to influence the infamous acid trip scene in his film Easy Rider. Years later, Hopper recalled, he and Dean Stockwell held the lights for Conner as he filmed Toni Basil dancing for BREAKAWAY. A rare example of a Bruce Conner musical film containing all original photography, what makes the film unquestionably Conner is his frenetic editing and the evanescence of his subject, a spirit flickering in celluloid.