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Stan Brakhage has left the world a legacy larger than we’ll ever be likely to get a handle on. With a body of work as large as his, one might find it difficult and ultimately pointless to try and reign it all in beneath a single umbrella. But there is a sheltering concept under which his vast array of films enjoys a bond: Brakhage wanted the world to learn to see again. He wanted us to rid ourselves of the shackles imposed on us by the rules of Renaissance perspective, to abandon the search for ever greater levels of visual acuity, definition, clarity and detail, and to re-embrace those parts of our experience that we have learned to let go unnoticed, or consider to be flawed by the standards of High Definition culture. As P. Adams Sitney notes, “When [Brakhage] decided to become a filmmaker he threw away his eyeglasses” (Sitney 1979:149). That about sums it up. (read the rest) -- Randolf Jordan, Off Screen
Those who consider cinema a narrative art form, and believe that films should have a beginning, a middle and an end - in that order - will have problems with the work of Stan Brakhage. His films were difficult also for those not willing to shed the conventionalised illusion, imposed by rules of perspective, compositional logic and "lenses grounded to achieve 19th-century compositional perspective". For Brakhage, the goal of cinema was the liberation of the eye itself, the creation of an act of seeing, previously unimagined and undefined by conventions of representation, an eye as natural and unprejudiced as that of a cat, a bee or an infant. There were few filmmakers - film director is too limiting a description - who went so far to train audiences to see differently. (rest the rest) -- Ronald Bergen, The Guardian
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This is to introduce myself. I am young and I believe in magic. I am learning how to cast spells. My profession is transforming. I am what is known as "an artist." Three years ago I made a discovery which caused me dis-ease at the time: neither the society in which I had grown up nor my society of that moment, my college, knew what to do with me. They were wary of me. -- Dartmouth, 1955
I am devoting my life to what is inappropriately called "The Experimental Film," in America, because I am an artist and, as such, am convinced that freedom of personal expression (that which is called "experiment" by those who don't understand it) is the natural beginning of any art, and because I love film and am excited above everything else by the possibilities inherent in film as a means of aesthetic expression. -- in answer to a questionnaire, 1957
I would say I grew very quickly as a film artist once I got rid of drama as prime source of inspiration. I began to feel that all history, all life, all that I would have as material with which to work, would have to come from the inside of me out rather than as some form imposed from the outside in. I had the concept of everything radiating out of me, and that the more personal or egocentric I would become, the deeper I would reach and the more I could touch these universal concerns which would involve all man. -- interview with P. Adams Sitney, Metaphors On Vision, 1963
OF NECESSITY I BECOME INSTRUMENT FOR THE PASSAGE OF INNER VISION, THRU ALL MY SENSIBILITIES, INTO ITS EXTERNAL FORM. My most active part in this process is to increase all my sensibilities (so that all films arise out of some total area of being or full life) AND, at the given moment of possible creation to act only out of necessity. In other words, I am principally concerned with revelation. -- letter to Sitney, 1963
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Complete filmography
Descriptions of all Stan Brakhage films
Stan Brakhage on the Web
Stan Brakhage @ Wikipedia
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p.s. Hey. How about this quite old but still breathing paean to Stan Brakhage? Interested? Hope so. Expect another rerun with a couple of preprogrammed lines from me at the bottom tomorrow.
Intro
'Stan Brakhage's great subject was light itself, its infinite varieties seen as manifestations of unbounded and unrestricted energy and its concretization into objects representing the trapping of that energy, and his great desire was to make cinema equal to the other arts by using that which was uniquely cinematic — by organizing light in the time and space of the projected image — in a way that would be worthy, structurally and aesthetically, of the poetry, painting, and music that most inspired him. The subtleties of his work, the intricacy with which he used composition and color and texture and rhythm, resulted in films that virtually demand multiple viewings. The best known and most important of avant-garde filmmakers, he was also in my estimation among the half-dozen greatest filmmakers in the history of the medium — and, as I believe time will establish, one of the very greatest artists of the 20th century in any medium. ...' (read the rest) -- Fred Camper, Senses of Cinema
Stan Brakhage has left the world a legacy larger than we’ll ever be likely to get a handle on. With a body of work as large as his, one might find it difficult and ultimately pointless to try and reign it all in beneath a single umbrella. But there is a sheltering concept under which his vast array of films enjoys a bond: Brakhage wanted the world to learn to see again. He wanted us to rid ourselves of the shackles imposed on us by the rules of Renaissance perspective, to abandon the search for ever greater levels of visual acuity, definition, clarity and detail, and to re-embrace those parts of our experience that we have learned to let go unnoticed, or consider to be flawed by the standards of High Definition culture. As P. Adams Sitney notes, “When [Brakhage] decided to become a filmmaker he threw away his eyeglasses” (Sitney 1979:149). That about sums it up. (read the rest) -- Randolf Jordan, Off Screen
Those who consider cinema a narrative art form, and believe that films should have a beginning, a middle and an end - in that order - will have problems with the work of Stan Brakhage. His films were difficult also for those not willing to shed the conventionalised illusion, imposed by rules of perspective, compositional logic and "lenses grounded to achieve 19th-century compositional perspective". For Brakhage, the goal of cinema was the liberation of the eye itself, the creation of an act of seeing, previously unimagined and undefined by conventions of representation, an eye as natural and unprejudiced as that of a cat, a bee or an infant. There were few filmmakers - film director is too limiting a description - who went so far to train audiences to see differently. (rest the rest) -- Ronald Bergen, The Guardian
Brakhage on Brakhage
This is to introduce myself. I am young and I believe in magic. I am learning how to cast spells. My profession is transforming. I am what is known as "an artist." Three years ago I made a discovery which caused me dis-ease at the time: neither the society in which I had grown up nor my society of that moment, my college, knew what to do with me. They were wary of me. -- Dartmouth, 1955
I am devoting my life to what is inappropriately called "The Experimental Film," in America, because I am an artist and, as such, am convinced that freedom of personal expression (that which is called "experiment" by those who don't understand it) is the natural beginning of any art, and because I love film and am excited above everything else by the possibilities inherent in film as a means of aesthetic expression. -- in answer to a questionnaire, 1957
I would say I grew very quickly as a film artist once I got rid of drama as prime source of inspiration. I began to feel that all history, all life, all that I would have as material with which to work, would have to come from the inside of me out rather than as some form imposed from the outside in. I had the concept of everything radiating out of me, and that the more personal or egocentric I would become, the deeper I would reach and the more I could touch these universal concerns which would involve all man. -- interview with P. Adams Sitney, Metaphors On Vision, 1963
OF NECESSITY I BECOME INSTRUMENT FOR THE PASSAGE OF INNER VISION, THRU ALL MY SENSIBILITIES, INTO ITS EXTERNAL FORM. My most active part in this process is to increase all my sensibilities (so that all films arise out of some total area of being or full life) AND, at the given moment of possible creation to act only out of necessity. In other words, I am principally concerned with revelation. -- letter to Sitney, 1963
Brakhage resources
Complete filmography
Descriptions of all Stan Brakhage films
Stan Brakhage on the Web
Stan Brakhage @ Wikipedia
Select frame enlargements
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The daylight shadow of a man in its movement evokes lights in the night. A rose held in hand reflects both sun and moon like illumination. The opening of a doorway onto trees anticipates the twilight into the night. A child is born on the lawn, born of water with its promisory rainbow, and the wild rose. It becomes the moon and the source of all light. Lights of the night become young children playing a circular game. The moon moves over a pillared temple to which all lights return. There is seen the sleep of innocents in their animal dreams, becoming the amusement, their circular game, becoming the morning. The trees change color and lose their leaves for the morn, they become the complexity of branches in which the shadow man hangs himself.
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Brakhage's new series of scratch-and-stain films, known as (...) or ellipses, are, among other things, a visual analogue to Abstract Expressionism. The onrushing imagery and the spatial conundrums it creates evoke not only Pollock but also the work of Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, and even Mark Rothko - that is Pollock et al., at 24 frames per second. Eschewing the camera, Brakhage scrapes away the film emulsion to create a thicket (or sometimes a spider's web) of white lines and rich, chemical colors. Some segments of the original footage appear to have been printed on negative stock or perhaps solarized - so that the blue and pink lines are inscribed on a white field. In any case, (...) is a cosmos. Rich without being ingratiating, the effect is one of rhythmic conflagration.
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'Europe, weighted down so much with that past, was THE DEAD. I was always Tourist there; I couldn't live in it. The graveyard could stand for all my view of Europe, for all the concerns with past art, for involvement with symbol. THE DEAD became my first work, in which things that might very easily be taken as symbols were so photographed as to destroy all their symbolic potential. The action of making THE DEAD kept me alive.' -- S.B.
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Brakhage made MOTHLIGHT without a camera. He just pasted mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine." - Jonas Mekas "MOTHLIGHT is a paradoxical preservation of pieces of dead moths in the eternal medium of light (which is life and draws the moth to death); so it flutters through its very disintegration. This abstract of flight captures matter's struggle to assume its proper form; the death of the moth does not cancel its nature, which on the filmstrip asserts itself. MOTHLIGHT is on one level a parable of death and resurrection, but most really concerns the persistence of the essential form, image, and motion of being." - Ken Kelman
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This hand-painted work six years in-the-making (37 in the studying of The Divine Comedy) demonstrates the earthly conditions of "Hell,""Purgatory" (or Transition) and "Heaven" (or "existence is song," which is the closest I'd presume upon heaven from my experience) as well as the mainspring of/from "Hell" (HELL SPIT FLEXION) in four parts which are inspired by the closed-eye or hypnagogic vision created by those emotional states. Originally painted on IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm, these paint-laden rolls have been carefully rephotographed and translated to 35mm and 16mm compilations by Dan Yanosky of Western Cine.
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"... unparalleled debauchery, when man turns into a filthy, cowardly, cruel, vicious reptile. That's what we need! And what's more, a little 'fresh blood' that we may grow accustomed to it ...." (Dostoyevsky's The Devils, Part II, Chapter VIII) "In my novel The Devils I attempted to depict the complex and heterogenous motives which may prompt even the purest of heart and the most naive people to take part in an absolutely monstrous crime." (Dostoyevsky's The Diary of a Writer)
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971)
Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse (1991)
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Sirius Remembered (1959)
The Dante Quartet (1987)
Dog Star Man (1964)
Mothlight (1963)
Black Ice (1994)
Water for Maya (2000)
Anticipation of the Night. 1958.
16mm; 40 minutes; color; silent
The daylight shadow of a man in its movement evokes lights in the night. A rose held in hand reflects both sun and moon like illumination. The opening of a doorway onto trees anticipates the twilight into the night. A child is born on the lawn, born of water with its promisory rainbow, and the wild rose. It becomes the moon and the source of all light. Lights of the night become young children playing a circular game. The moon moves over a pillared temple to which all lights return. There is seen the sleep of innocents in their animal dreams, becoming the amusement, their circular game, becoming the morning. The trees change color and lose their leaves for the morn, they become the complexity of branches in which the shadow man hangs himself."..." Reel 2. 1998
16mm; 16 minutes; color; silent
Brakhage's new series of scratch-and-stain films, known as (...) or ellipses, are, among other things, a visual analogue to Abstract Expressionism. The onrushing imagery and the spatial conundrums it creates evoke not only Pollock but also the work of Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, and even Mark Rothko - that is Pollock et al., at 24 frames per second. Eschewing the camera, Brakhage scrapes away the film emulsion to create a thicket (or sometimes a spider's web) of white lines and rich, chemical colors. Some segments of the original footage appear to have been printed on negative stock or perhaps solarized - so that the blue and pink lines are inscribed on a white field. In any case, (...) is a cosmos. Rich without being ingratiating, the effect is one of rhythmic conflagration.The Dead. 1960.
16mm; 11 minutes; color; silent
'Europe, weighted down so much with that past, was THE DEAD. I was always Tourist there; I couldn't live in it. The graveyard could stand for all my view of Europe, for all the concerns with past art, for involvement with symbol. THE DEAD became my first work, in which things that might very easily be taken as symbols were so photographed as to destroy all their symbolic potential. The action of making THE DEAD kept me alive.' -- S.B.Mothlight. 1963.
16mm; 3 minutes; color; silent
Brakhage made MOTHLIGHT without a camera. He just pasted mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine." - Jonas Mekas "MOTHLIGHT is a paradoxical preservation of pieces of dead moths in the eternal medium of light (which is life and draws the moth to death); so it flutters through its very disintegration. This abstract of flight captures matter's struggle to assume its proper form; the death of the moth does not cancel its nature, which on the filmstrip asserts itself. MOTHLIGHT is on one level a parable of death and resurrection, but most really concerns the persistence of the essential form, image, and motion of being." - Ken KelmanThe Dante Quartet. 1987.
16mm or 35mm; 6 minutes; color; silent
This hand-painted work six years in-the-making (37 in the studying of The Divine Comedy) demonstrates the earthly conditions of "Hell,""Purgatory" (or Transition) and "Heaven" (or "existence is song," which is the closest I'd presume upon heaven from my experience) as well as the mainspring of/from "Hell" (HELL SPIT FLEXION) in four parts which are inspired by the closed-eye or hypnagogic vision created by those emotional states. Originally painted on IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm, these paint-laden rolls have been carefully rephotographed and translated to 35mm and 16mm compilations by Dan Yanosky of Western Cine.Murder Psalm. 1980.
16mm; 18 minutes; color; silent
"... unparalleled debauchery, when man turns into a filthy, cowardly, cruel, vicious reptile. That's what we need! And what's more, a little 'fresh blood' that we may grow accustomed to it ...." (Dostoyevsky's The Devils, Part II, Chapter VIII) "In my novel The Devils I attempted to depict the complex and heterogenous motives which may prompt even the purest of heart and the most naive people to take part in an absolutely monstrous crime." (Dostoyevsky's The Diary of a Writer)10 films
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971)
Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse (1991)
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Sirius Remembered (1959)
The Dante Quartet (1987)
Dog Star Man (1964)
Mothlight (1963)
Black Ice (1994)
Water for Maya (2000)
*
p.s. Hey. How about this quite old but still breathing paean to Stan Brakhage? Interested? Hope so. Expect another rerun with a couple of preprogrammed lines from me at the bottom tomorrow.