Bryan Konefsky

Do You Want To Go Down This Way, Or Go Back The Way We Came?

A new essay film by Bryan Konefsky that uses the lens of loss and grief to explore intersections between memory and artifact.

Exquisite Moving Corpse

The Surrealist, "Exquisite Corpse" was a French Café parlor game. "Exquisite Moving Corpse" is more of an artist chain letter. 60 artists participated over a two-year period, beginning in March 2020. Each invited artist made a one minute video in response to the last frame of the previous minute.

Teatro Principal

A portrait of the Teatro Principal in Camagüey, Cuba. In making this film Konefsky thought about Conchita (the house manager of the theatre) and how maternal and nurturing her chair folding gesture was. Thinking about this film now, the artist hopes there is a thread of empathy embedded in the film –empathy for all the many, many theatres around the globe that are now closed due to Covid-19.

Ace

Sometimes an actor's performance transcends the particular role they have been assigned. Here Kirk Douglas demonstrates the power of his "camera presence" from 1951 - 2010.

He was Some Kind of a Man

Sound and image from Orson Welles' 1958 film A Touch Of Evil

Dracula

A short film by Bryan Konefsky

RHT

In the film Roman Holiday, for some unknown reason, the cinematographer chose to spend an unnecessarily long time "poking around" under Audrey Hepburn's dress.

Moya Sestra

Simone Simon is one of my film "heroes." Here, she plots to kill her therapist in one of the final scenes from Jaques Tourneur's 1942 film, Cat People. I guess you could say of my manipulation - it's not a good idea to let your pets gain access to furniture, it never ends well.

Miss Yummy Yummy

This work was shot in the town of Wurzburg while I was traveling in Germany. The final film/video was inspired by Bruce Conner's iconic deconstruction of image and celebrity - Marilyn X 5 (1973).

Does Anyone Ever Really Quit?

Shot at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 2003, the obsessive behavior of Joaquin the black bear was reminscent of a film that impressed me as a young student… Once upon a time, the University of Bridgeport had an interesting film program with instructors such as George Morris (credited in Slackers) and video artist, Shalom Gorewitz. The film that impressed me was made by film students at that university, and was the first structuralist film that I remember being exposed to. This particular student film was a locked-down shot of an obsessive polar bear who struck his head against the cement wall of his pen every time he cycled by it. The audio in the film was silent except for the loud crashing sound of a cymbal at the moment of bear-impact... I don't know what ever happened to that film, those film students, or the polar bear, but the memory has stayed with me.

Chicken Delight

Bryan Konefsky's meditation on the United States' ongoing courtship with radioactivity & the FDA's decision to serve irradiated meat in their School Lunch Program.

I Yam What I Yam

Bryan Konefsky's inspired doc starts in 1929 when monocular vision was not limited to the gaze of telescopes (Edwin Hubble) or movie cameras (Dziga Vertov). 1929 was also the year that the one-eyed, “strong to the finish” sailor named Popeye was first introduced to the United States as a comic strip character. And, even after 75 years and 234 movies, Popeye’s rebel yell for the common good, “I yam what I yam” still resonates with the hope and conviction of his visionary colleagues.

Vancouver

A five part diary inspired by a recent trip to Vancouver, British Columbia where, at the border a Canadian Customs Officer accused me of smuggling pornography into their country. Ultimately this work is a meditation on paranoia, false perceptions, misguided judgments and a particular brand of “profiling.”

Amsterdam Diary

Amsterdam Diary is a short observational work that was recently shot at Koninklijk Paleis Dam in the Netherlands. This video-portrait studies public space, the intersection of two very specific realities, and, well, the futility of it all.

Albuquerque Diary

This short work was built around a recording of John (last name unknown), a street performer in Albuquerque, New Mexico whose univited performance at the annual Route 66 “Santa Claus” parade was curiously engaging and, well, ultimately rather profound.