Movies: Stan Brakhage

Says Fred Camper of the film: "Invited to Riverside, California, Brakhage, under the mistaken impression that it was a desert, was planning a desert movie when he arrived to discover an unattractive suburban landscape. So he decided to make, and shoo...

Red and ephemeral blue and purple plant shapes half-curled against a tan ground, which begins to flash white cracks in dried mud patterns. A flush of watery blues (in this hand-painted step-printed film) brightens the plant-skein into a veriety (sic)...

Brakhage's hand carvings directly into the film emulsions are illuminated and textured by Solomon's lighting and optical printing....

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Imag...

This is one of the most elaborately edited of all the hand-painted films of late - a Haydenesque complexity of thematic variations on a totally visual (i.e., un-musical) theme. This film is composed of 35mm hand-painted images reduced to 16mm film, ...

Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s....

From a murky landscape, a wooded mountain emerges. We watch the sun. We see a bearded man climbing up the mountain through the snow. He carries an ax, and he's accompanied by a dog. His labors continue. There is no soundtrack. Images rush past - wate...

SONGS 17 & 18: The movie house cathedral and a singular room (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969)....

A film by experimantal filmmaker Stan Brakhage....

The film begins with a series of horizontally running ocean tide waves, sometimes with mountains in the background, hand-painted patterns, sometimes step-printed hand-painting, abstractions composed of distorted (jammed) TV shapes in shades of blue w...

We move back and forth between scenes of a family at home and thoughts about the stars and creation. Children hold chickens while an adult clips their wings; we see a forest; a narrator talks about stars and light and eternity. A dog joins the hens a...

A film about the naturalness of sexuality. Its four sequences feature heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking, dogs copulating, and naked childen at play....

SONGS 2 & 3: Fire and a mind’s movement in remembering (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969)....

Hungarian home movies are examined by the likes of James Ellroy and Stan Brakhage for evidence of family problems....

SONGS 17 & 18: The movie house cathedral and a singular room (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969)....

The creation myths of the Yekuana Indians of the Orinoco region of Venezuela provide a transparent look at the poetic process by which human beings construct meaning from their experience. Narrated by Stan Brakhage. Music and sound by Bruce Odland....

SONG 6: The painted veil via moth-death (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969)....

Someone said to me, of this film, that it was really about light; but Jane (who takes it as a portrait – i. e., sees herself in it) said: You gave me the moon and seven stars... and I signed this film, simply, Stan....

SONG 12: Verticals and shadows caught in glass traps (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969)....

Devastation in two parts....