Creating nearly 400 films in his lifetime, Stan Brakhage was one of the most prolific and influential American experimental filmmakers. Brakhage’s beautiful and intimate films use colour and abstract form to explore love, mortality and spirituality. Brakhage endeavoured to remake filmmaking in order to create new viewing experiences, which he termed ‘moving-visual-thinking’. His experiments with directly scratching and painting on the film’s surface and layering recorded images, reflect his strong desire to remove film from the confines of narrative cinema and break audiences habitual patterns of viewing.
Stan Brakage Program 1 Ages 15+ 63 minutes
Fri 18 April 6.00pm / Cinema A
Cat’s Cradle 1959
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 6 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘Sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a “medium” cat.’ Stan Brakhage
The Garden of Earthly Delights 1981
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 2:30 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘This film (related to Mothlight) is a collage composed entirely of montane zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is an homage to (but also argument with) Hieronymus Bosch.’ Stan Brakhage
The Dante Quartet 1987
70MM + 35MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 8 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘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.’ Stan Brakhage
Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse 1991
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 10 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘The primary “Molten Horror” is TV — though there are other horrors metaphored in the film. Four superimposed rolls of hand-painted and bi-packed television negative imagery are edited so as to approximate the hypnagogic process whereby the optic nerves resist grotesque infusions of luminescent light.’ Stan Brakhage
Sirius Remembered 1959
16 MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 12 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘I was coming to terms with decay of a dead thing and the decay of the memories of a loved being that had died and it was undermining all abstract concepts of death . . . I was taking song as my inspiration and for the rhythm structure, just as dogs dancing, prancing around a corpse, and howling in rhythm-structures or rhythm-intervals might be considered like the birth of some kind of son.’ Stan Brakhage
Untitled (For Marilyn) 1992
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 11 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘An untitled hand-painted film — a hypnagogic four-part thought process interwoven with scratched words in thanks to and praise of God.’ Stan Brakhage
The Cat of the Worm’s Green Realm 1997
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘Flares of suns, imprismed midst yellows and greens and vibrant sky blues . . . always the forms of many varieties of leafage mix with a veritable rain or clash of overall tones, a fire of forms, a glowing colour photo-negative of worm, and the final canopies of autumn tone and sky tone permeated by sun, sun streaks and octagonal prism shapes ad infinitum.’ Stan Brakhage
Commingled Containers 1997
16MM. COLOUR, SILENT, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A photography of the essence of life itself as the interaction of pulsating and commingling containers.’ Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage Program 2 Ages 15+ 78 minutes
Sat 26 April 3.00pm / Cinema A
Dog Star Man 1961–64
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 78 MINUTES (COMPRISING 5 PARTS: ‘PRELUDE’, ‘DOG STAR MAN: PART 1’, ‘DOG STAR MAN: PART 2’, ‘DOG STAR MAN: PART 3’, ‘DOG STAR MAN: PART 4’), USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘Dog Star Man is a compendium of unorthodox filmmaking techniques applied to a deceptively simple narrative: a man (played by Brakhage) carrying an axe and accompanied by a dog, struggles up a steep mountainside and chops down a dead tree. Originally, Brakhage has said, “I thought it would be a little, simple film on a woodsman, myself as the woodsman, the wood-gatherer”, but “it ended up as . . . an exploration of the whole history of man. I mean, as I climb this hill the images suggest in many ways, metaphorically and in other ways, the history of man himself and his endeavour, and the meaning of whatever it is he does and makes”. . . . While deeply personal in inspiration, Dog Star Man is also the pre-eminent example of an avant-garde film with epic scope and a hero of mythic proportions, comparable to other twentieth century, modernist classics like Ezra Pound’s Cantos or James Joyce’s Ulysses.’ William C. Wees, Film Reference
Stan Brakhage Program 3 Ages 15+ 70 minutes
Sat 10 May 3.00pm / Cinema A
Mothlight 1963
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 4 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black.’ Stan Brakhage
Window Water Baby Moving 1959
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 12 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘ . . . Brakhage’s treatment of the birth of his daughter. Here he unleashes the full power of his technique, so apt to become abstractly unintelligible when left to his own devices, on a specific subject. The result is a picture so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilization in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in the history of the movies.’ Arthur Winsten, The New York Post
Stellar 1993
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 2 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion.’ Canyon Cinema.
I . . . Dreaming 1988
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 8 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘This is a setting-to-film of a “collage” of Stephen Foster phrases by composer Joel Haertling. The recurring musical themes and melancholia of Foster refer to “loss of love” in the popular “torch song” mode; but the film envisions a re-awakening of such senses-of-love as children know, and it posits (along a line of words scratched over picture) the psychology of waiting.’ Canyon Cinema
Christ Mass Sex Dance 1991
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘This work, composed of six rolls of superimposed images set to Jim Tenney’s electronic music track Blue Suede, is a celebration of the balletic restraints of adolescent sexuality shaped (in this instance) by The Nutcracker Suite of Tchaikovsky as well as the gristly roots of Elvis Presley.’ Canyon Cinema
Black Ice 1994
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 2 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘I lost sight due a blow on the head from slipping on black ice (leading to eye surgery, eventually); and now (because of artificially thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter are made in frightful awareness of black ice. These “meditations” have finally produced this hand-painted, step-printed film.’ Stan Brakhage
Crack Glass Eulogy 1992
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 6 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A nostalgic envisionment of city living - the potential shards of memory seen as if always on the verge of cutting the mind to pieces . . . ’ Stan Brakhage
The Dead 1960
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 11 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘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.’ Stan Brakhage
The Dark Tower 1999
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 3 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘An homage to all the dark towers in literary history.’ Stan Brakhage
Lovesong 2001
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 12 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A hand-painted visualization of sex in the mind’s eye.’ Stan Brakhage
Stately Mansions Did Decree 1999
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 6 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘Stan Brakhage’s spectacular hand-painted Stately Mansions Did Decree fills the screen with flickering shards of red and orange that present a universe ablaze with energy.’
Fred Camper, The Chicago Reader The Wonder Ring 1955
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 6 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘On a theme suggested by Joseph Cornell. A sharp change in Brakhage’s work, we see New York’s Third Avenue El (since demolished) as though through the eyes of a child on a merry-goround.’ Canyon Cinema
Stan Brakhage Program 4 Ages 15+ 53 minutes
Sat 17 May 3.00pm / Cinema A
Blue Moses 1962
16MM, Black and white, MONO, 11 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A meat enigma spoken in eternal language of director, con man, and magician. It’s about the sham flesh that men create to dam the streaming of truth from their muscles and senses . . . a molecule of revelation in the shape of a drama thrown off by the artist between Anticipation of the Night and Dog Star Man.’ Michael McClure
Anticipation of the Night 1958
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 42 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘[A] film in the first person. The protagonist, like the members of the audience, is a voyeur, and his eventual suicide is a result of his inability to participate in the ‘untutored’ seeing experience of a child. Anticipation consists of a flow of colours and shapes which constantly intrigues us by placing the unknown object next to the known in a significant relationship, by metamorphosing one visual statement into another.’ P Adams Sitney
Stan Brakhage Program 5 Ages 15+ 80 minutes
Wed 28 May 6.00pm / Cinema A
A Child’s Garden and the Serious Sea 1991
16MM, COLOUR, SILENT, 80 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: STAN BRAKHAGE
‘A Child’s Garden is a beautiful, densely allusive and ultimately elusive film, as determinedly difficult as any passage in modern poetry. Brakhage’s most profound influences would seem to be Eliot and Pound, rather than any artists from the film world. For filmgoers looking for an escape from the tyranny of narration, here is a ravishing experience.’ Dave Kehr, New York Times
