Movie

Persian Series #10 (2000)

Persian Series #10 IMDb TMDB

Stan Brakhage

"Twigs" of color in space, and pure white "ghosts" of them in the background interspersed with dark amalgams of these and conglomerate forms. The resolve of these themes is a combination of "amalgams" and "ghosts" at one in interplay, and then dark slashed spaces with "webs" of white, webbed spaces on white and, finally, solarization of colored forms - midst which the frame-line rises from bottom and drifts a few seconds visible, creating an insubstantiality of the frame of these images.

Movie

Persian Series #6 (2000)

Persian Series #6 IMDb TMDB

Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #6 begins with what appears to be dried red and yellow rose petals, suddenly shot-thru with blue which causes a shift to violets and greens. This mash of colors thickens and is scored by white and then black, calligraphic lines, which are "echoed" in all previous floral colors whose "dance" seems to turn clock-wise and "explode" into fiery reds.

Movie

Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself (1962)

Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself TMDB

Stan Brakhage actor: Don Weygandt / Robert Benson …

other title: 汤普金斯先生内心深处

In “Mr. Tompkins Learns the Facts of Life”, Mr. Tompkins learns about biology. In a wild and entertaining dream, his creator, author George Gamow, sends him through his own blood steam to investigate how his body really functions. Professor Igor Gamow and legendary filmmaker, Stan Brakhage, made the film “Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself” based on George Gamow’s book. The film includes an introduction by George Gamow, himself.

Movie

"..." Reel 3 (1998)

"..." Reel 3 IMDb TMDB

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

Movie

Passage Through: A Ritual (1990)

Passage Through: A Ritual IMDb TMDB

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Through] required the most exacting editing process ever; and in the course of that work it occurred to me that I’d originally made 'The Riddle of Lumen' hoping someone would make an ‘answering’ film and entertain my visual riddle in the manner of the riddling poets of yore.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.

Movie

Roman Numeral: I (1979)

Roman Numeral: I IMDb TMDB

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."

Movie

American 30s Song (1969)

American 30s Song IMDb TMDB

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

Movie

Faust's Other: An Idyll (1988)

Faust's Other: An Idyll IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

"..." Reel 2 (1998)

"..." Reel 2 IMDb TMDB

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

Movie

Tryst Haunt (1993)

Tryst Haunt IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

Sexual Meditation: Hotel (1972)

Sexual Meditation: Hotel IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

My Mountain: Song 27 (1968)

My Mountain: Song 27 IMDb TMDB

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).

Movie

Ephemeral Solidity (1993)

Ephemeral Solidity IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

Persian Series #8 (2000)

Persian Series #8 IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

Sexual Meditation: Open Field (1973)

Sexual Meditation: Open Field IMDb TMDB

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

Movie

Sexual Meditation: Faun's Room, Yale (1972)

Sexual Meditation: Faun's Room, Yale IMDb TMDB

Stan Brakhage actor: P. Adams Sitney / Jane Wodening

This, the third of the Sexual Meditation Series, might also be seen as a triangular portrait of Julia and P. Adams Sitney and Jane Brakhage.

Movie

Persian Series #13 (2001)

Persian Series #13 IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

Persian Series #14 (2001)

Persian Series #14 IMDb TMDB

Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #14 is composed of muted color-shapes shifting variably in juxtaposition and contrast with high-contrast black & white abstract patterns.

Movie

Persian Series #11 (2000)

Persian Series #11 IMDb TMDB

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.

Movie

Persian Series #7 (2000)

Persian Series #7 IMDb TMDB

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.