Stan Brakhage — Director (148)
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"..." Reel 3 (1998) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
"..." Reel 3
director: Stan Brakhage
"The third and shortest section reintroduces camera-derived imagery and, minimal as it may be (sunlight shimmering on water, seagull wheeling in the sky), it's still a shock to see "something." Brakhage continues to play with surfaces, layering the image with scratch bursts and soft-focus superimpositions; sentiment arrives with representation." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
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Passage Through: A Ritual (1990) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Passage Through: A Ritual
director: Stan Brakhage
“[Passage Through] required the most exacting editing process ever; and in the course of that work it occurred to me that I’d originally made 'The Riddle of Lumen' hoping someone would make an ‘answering’ film and entertain my visual riddle in the manner of the riddling poets of yore. I most expected Hollis Frampton (because of 'Zorns Lemma') to pick up the challenge; but he never did. In some sense I think composer Corner has – and now we have this dance of riddles as music and film combine to make ‘passage,’ in every sense of the word, further possible.” –S.B.
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Roman Numeral: I (1979) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Roman Numeral: I
director: Stan Brakhage
An attempt to conjure pictorially, from the mind, an image that isn't referential: "...I'd like to give something back, not a picture of a flower, but some flower that couldn't exist except on film." - S.B.
"I'm not sure if this work is titled I for Imagnostic, or "I" as designating first person singular or Roman Numeral One."
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American 30s Song (1969) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
American 30s Song
director: Stan Brakhage
“Begins with a portrait of the filmmaker’s father, moves through imagery of various forms of transportation (cars, boats, trains, and planes), and concludes with a ‘Postlude’ in which filmmaker Jerome Hill deplanes from a jet.” –Gerald R. Barrett & Wendy Brabner, STAN BRAKHAGE: A GUIDE TO REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
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Faust's Other: An Idyll (1988) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Faust's Other: An Idyll
director: Stan Brakhage actor: Stan Brakhage / Joel Haertling
“Faust Part 2” reveals the modern Faust in a romantic interlude, an idyll (from the Greek idein, "to see"); also, a journey of the id. A sense of story is inferred through the complex interweaving of human gesture, expression, and bodily movement within vibrantly shifting colours and rhythmic development, creating multiple levels of metaphorical meaning. A collaborative work with paintings by Emily Ripley and soundtrack by Joel Haertling.
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"..." Reel 2 (1998) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
"..." Reel 2
director: Stan Brakhage
"A second 20-minute reel is more staccato mad chicken-scratch calligraphy fluttering out of a yellow void, sketchy lightning bolts or fireworks interrupted by a sudden field of turquoise." - J. Hoberman
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Tryst Haunt (1993) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Tryst Haunt
director: Stan Brakhage
A hand-painted film photographically step-printed so that the thicket-like lines of paint are “played-off” against some centered pale-hued areas of paint in such a way as to suggest a clearing in a forest of branches.
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Sexual Meditation: Hotel (1972) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Sexual Meditation: Hotel
director: Stan Brakhage
This film takes its cue from that ultimate situation of Sex/Med/masturbation - the loft-and-lonely hotel room. It is thus easily twice the length and complexity of any other in the series.
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My Mountain: Song 27 (1968) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
My Mountain: Song 27
director: Stan Brakhage
Image-by-image study of the Arapaho summit, in all seasons for two years; the clouds and the climate that carve this place in the landscape (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
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Ephemeral Solidity (1993) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Ephemeral Solidity
director: Stan Brakhage
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, single-frames, shots of two, three, four frames and, occasionally, slightly longer shots, all interspersed with a variety of calculated lengths of black leader which cause a flickering of abstract patterns in rhythmed darkness.
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Persian Series #8 (2000) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #8
director: Stan Brakhage
Pale petal and stem-like shapes counter punted rhythmically by an even paler "background" of truly ephemeral of truly ephemeral (almost invisible) shapes. Again, the foreground movement is clockwise and often "ribbed" as the film darkens into a blend of foreground/background and, eventually, a meld as of white hardened clots fretted by glyphs.
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Sexual Meditation: Open Field (1973) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Sexual Meditation: Open Field
director: Stan Brakhage
OPEN FIELD is in the mind, of course, and exists as a weave of trees, grasses, waters, and bodies poised and fleeting at childhood's end. The scene is lit as by sun and moon alike and haunted by the pursuant adult. - Stan Brakhage
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Persian Series #13 (2001) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #13
director: Stan Brakhage
Persian Series #13 is a series of extremely dark images, mostly in purples, greens, and fiery red-orange-yellows, shifting one to another in displays of textured shapes which suggest a thick tangle weave of threads.
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Persian Series #14 (2001) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #14
director: Stan Brakhage
Persian Series #14 is composed of muted color-shapes shifting variably in juxtaposition and contrast with high-contrast black & white abstract patterns.
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Persian Series #11 (2000) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #11
director: Stan Brakhage
Persian Series #11 begins with a "window" of yellow paint adrift in the full frame of multicolored paint-shapes. Alternating black-space/white-space exists as a back-drop for slashes and curves of color - reds and blues shifting to red-blue-green, then yellow, etc. slashed in black.
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Persian Series #7 (2000) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #7
director: Stan Brakhage
Very pale, thin, hieroglyphic pinks, greens and blues in a white space which is thickened over by ribbed mashes of these colors which "dissolve" into varied shapes almost suggesting landscapes and ephemeral bouquets. Dark blurred shapes mix with each other and give-way to clockwise-turning pillars of yellow, scored with white glyphs, at times, and fading mashes of tones and, finally, a calligraphic shape.
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Persian Series #5 (1999) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Persian Series #5
director: Stan Brakhage
Dark blood red slow shifting tones (often embedded in dark) / (often shot-thru with parallel wave-like lines) composed of all previous shapes and flowers as if trying, linearly, to evolve a glyph-script. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
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Prelude 10 (1996) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Prelude 10
director: Stan Brakhage
Prelude 10 is a double-printed film with an extreme mixture of darks shot thru with jewel-like bursts of color, and very white bursts of light and fleeting colored forms.