Stan Brakhage, hey

rob_giri

Well-known member
Just found a dude on Soulseek who has a bunch of early avant garde films, including some Kenneth Anger, Kris Bargerg, Derek Jarman and even Man Ray's' Le Retour A La Raison' and Marcel Duchamp's 'Anemic Cinema'. Pretty cool find considering this stuff's ridiculously hard-to-come-by nature. Also i found another guy who had Stan Brakhage's 1971 film 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes'. Downloaded the first 10 minutes and all it is is these silent, jerky colour closeups of some dudes examining a rotting dead body in a morgue, with some intriguing closeups of the corpse's inflamed testicles. ewwww. Am yet to find any Maya Deren.

Anyone else seen any of his work? His colour and light approach sounds interesting, and isn't he supposed to be like the first guy who well and truly seperated the avant garde from classical cinema, realising its potential as a new subversive medium?
 

Jay Vee

Member
Brakhage is mostly wonderful. I still find a few of his films completely baffling in that I don't react to them at all on a technical or aesthetic level, yet the majority of what I've seen I find intense and moving. The Criterion Collection released an excellent Region 1 2-DVD set of many of his films, including "The Act...", last year. I recommend it.
 
That's an awesome find!!

childOftheBlogosphere said:
Anyone else seen any of his work? His colour and light approach sounds interesting, and isn't he supposed to be like the first guy who well and truly seperated the avant garde from classical cinema, realising its potential as a new subversive medium?

Hmmm, I'm not sure, but he was certainly the most influential figure within avant garde cinema (though he preferred the term "poetic film"). He was inspired by poetry (esp Gertrude Stein) and modern expressionist painters, and like other modernist artists seeking "pure" forms, he wanted to construct a "pure cinema" - a purely visual cinema against the dominant language-based cinema. Hence, his films have no sound.
The Act of Seeing is about seeing with the innocent eye of a child - strangely watching actual autopsies being performed. I've only seen it once and don't think I could watch it again - the most memorable part is when skin is being pulled off the scalp of one of the corpses. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.

Another interesting Brakhage film is Window Water Baby Moving (1959), which shows the birth of his son. It's simultaneously brutal and beautiful. His later work is also really interesting since it's completely non-representational - made by painting or gluing things (like moth wings) to the film strip - a play of pure light and colour.
 
Brakhage

I think Brakhage is a true visionary....Phillip Brophy's 100 Modern Soundracks has the Act of Seeing as the loudest film ever made...What do you think? I agree with you, once is enough. Chris
 
"the loudest film ever made" - that's very interesting, and makes sense in a certain way. Somehow when I think about the film I remember it as having sound even though it doesn't. The imagery evokes sound in a way.
 

nick.K

gabba survivor
i spent some time trying to license some brakhage for release on DVD before his death. it's all on VHS and degreading.. the re:voir label and the LUX have being trying to preserve his work for several years (very protectively), but it's not these guys on the net (many in south america) who are making the work availiable. there are several people with astounding libraries of films, I've been in touch a while but I'm waiting till I have the hard-drive space, and use for them before I can actually move them over. I'd certainly be interested in working on a project that archived, shared and eventually showed them if anyone has the time/space/bandwidth.
 
Wonderful idea, I am a filmmaker myself, but I have seen lots of Brakhage films, it would be nice to screen them based on his themes, discuss them and maye show new films, new directors. I know Canyon Cinema has some of his work. Chris
 

nick.K

gabba survivor
oughta say that in the course of my research I turned up many brilliant contemporary film-makers, little known outside the festival circuit. I've hours of research tapes of gleaned from : contemporary film-makers showreels, all-nighters in film-libraries round the country, old BBC2 late night series (Midnight Underground), the odd avant garde festival VHS, all stacked and logged in my front room, with piles of notes, contacts, license agreements - I just lost the funding so I put the project on hold.

So, if anyone's got the money and the will. I'd be interested to hear from them
 
That sounds amazing! Taking my films to festivals, underground cinemas, art festivals, I have seen some amazing work that I knew I probably would never see again, but the images resonate. Your project sounds really fascinating, have you thought of doing a documentary? Chris
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
Mothlight is stunning.
On another film without camera tip has anyone seen Len Lye's PARTICLES IN SPACE etched directly into the celluloid, one of my faves. He worked for the GPO Film Unit , an analogy can be drawn with the Radiophonic Workshop (cup of tea psychedelia)
 

echevarian

babylon sister
I must confess that I don't get Brakhage

His films convinced me that I wasn't cut out to be a director and change my major away from film.

Although I do seem to remember liking Mothlight .

I'm more thinking of films like the one where he refracts light through the bottom of an ashtray for an hour and a half. This film put 90% of my film class to sleep in about twenty minutes, I managed to make it forty five.

I hate, most silent film.

Not all, most.

Thats why I'm a musician and not a film maker.
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
Yea, a VOODOO witch! But aren't the best of them? According the Xenakis Pierre Schaeffer spent about 10 years drinking obscene amounts of alcohol, gobbling amphetamines and studying magic, yet another genius who became a Crowley-obsessive. But the jury is out on whether or not we can praise Schaeffer, he did, after all, decide 40 years after his first musique concrete experiments, after completely reconfiguring traditional compositional techniques and thus changing the course of music forever, that it "wasn't music". He also believed that the world doesn't change and that any hope of creating new interesting music is lost. Isn't that just, like, stupid?? But interesting to see the patern emerging though, can anyone think of any other figures who have been instrumental in changing the utilisation of a given medium and revolutionising a new form of expression....and have then turned to magic?? Whats with that???

Oh yea, and tough call on underground filmmakers dude. Some validity there perhaps, but surely you can't discount the entire genre because you think that every figure in it's rich history had the wrong priorities and weren't being honest? And how could you possibly think that anyway? Or am i being obvious here? I guess this is a culture discussion forum, so lets DISCUSS!!

Oh yea, speaking of this forum, does everybody agree with me when i say that its really awesome? Props to Woebot (my hero) and K-Punk (my oracle) for the invention.

And yea nick you should get that shit up and running, bros!
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
aww 'The Act of Seeing...' just got REALLY disgusting. Can't say i feel like an innocent child yet, i just feel REALLY FUCKING GROSSED OUT.
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
Hey! You just excused yourself for making a rash generalisation and then you made another even rasher one! Anti-narrative cinema is dealing with something totally different to narrative cinema. Its focus is more centered on the viewer rather than the film itself, or something like that (i think thats what my 7:30am brain is teling me). Anti-narrative tells a different type of story, a story that resides outside the boundaries of normal narrative structure, that can't normally be told within limitations. It can be, for instance as is with the case of Brakhage, a purely visual one, a purely sensory one.

Also don't you think the availability of technology is a good thing because it gives more people a chance to (yawn) express themselves? I was talking to Greg Davis on Soulseek a few weeks back, and i was telling him about Grime, and his response was "Yea, just what we need, another genre". I really hate that type of attitude towards culture (sorry Greg), the one that desires for less variety because they believe that quality is inverse to to diversification, that to give the quiet masses a voice is bad because it will inevitably open the flood gates to utter shite. I mean there is some validity in this but isn't it just fascist to try and hold it back. And plus, the more there is, the more good stuff there will be, doesn't that make sense? The way that good music has changed in the last few decades is not that there was once great music all over the place (the 60s etc) and now there is just crap, but that there is far more good music now but it is just spread vastly over continents and genres and thus harder to find. There has never been more interesting and quality music than there is now, and to possibly think that it was a bad idea to give kids in Bow and Hackney music-synthesis programs because they'd make more crap music that we don't need is just obviously stupid, conservative and close-minded.

Ah i was going to make another point but i've forgotten. Sorry bout the off-topic rant, but its all true!
 
paul said:
I'm interested in seeing that film made by some guy about his own family where he put old 8mm films and answerphone messages into imovie on a mac...

Tarnation by Jonathon Caouette. I'm curious to know what kind of distribution it's getting - if any.
 

scissors

Member
childOftheBlogosphere said:
Anti-narrative tells a different type of story, a story that resides outside the boundaries of normal narrative structure, that can't normally be told within limitations. It can be, for instance as is with the case of Brakhage, a purely visual one, a purely sensory one.

though it's a bit tenuous to say the least to attribute narratives to music, i often wonder about the relationships between non-narrative (or anti if it must be) cinema and music. not so much stereolab titling a song 'brakhage' or such blatant projects as dj spooky's "remix" of birth of a nation, but maybe something like maya deren's martial arts film and grime? (at least perhaps the kode9/digitalmystiks 'isitreallygrime' strain. i guess she can be the new david sylvian). i know brakhage makes silent films - 'purely visual', but then the analogous 'purely aural' starts popping up in my head among many other things when i think about his films. though maybe this does nobody any good.
 
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