watchlist_extended

”This little film (originally painted on IMAX) attempts to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in meditation on sorrow." -S.B.

“The 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." -S.B.

Extremely autobiographical piece made during an intensely depressive period for the filmmaker after his divorce from Jane, his first wife, and separation from his five children. Brakhage calls it "a true, narrative, dramatic psychodrama". The film's background music is a piece which is a collage of brief phrases from various Stephen Foster songs whose common theme is loss. Brakhage scratches individual words from these songs on the film at intervals, and the shaky letters dance uncertainly across the frame. The primary visual theme is of the 55-year-old filmmaker himself brooding in a lonely apartment, sitting on the floor leaning against a wall, repeatedly rising naked from his bed and falling back. This is intercut with footage made years earlier, in the 70s, when his children were much smaller, as they played happily in the home they once shared. Even at his very lowest point, Brakhage continued to turn his life into art.

"This film presents the voice of a child play-singing in relation to full orchestral 'takes' of The Times and visually juxtaposed with children-at-play (my grandchildren Iona and Quay Bartek) in Americana backyard. They are seen, as in dream, to be already caught-up in ── yet absolutely distinct ── from the rituals of adulthood." -S.B.

"A series of shocks of recognition of daily living as a series of big bangs - creations of the universe." -S.B.

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) Hieronymous Bosch." -S.B.

”My laboriously painted vision of the god of the forest." -S.B.

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

"What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black." -S.B.

他在《水窗中的颤动婴儿》（Window Water Baby Moving，1959）中，以倒叙和一连串的主题元素画面，描绘珍•布莱凯吉（Jane Brakhage）怀孕和生产的情景。

"Sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a 'medium' cat." -S.B.

At a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned. "S. Brakhage, entering, WITH HIS CAMERA, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without our knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes. It is a room full of appalling particular intimacies, the last ditch of individuation. Here our vague nightmare of mortality acquires the names and faces of OTHERS. This last is a process that requires a WITNESS; and what 'idea' may finally have inserted itself into the sensible world we can still scarcely guess, for the CAMERA would seem the perfect Eidetic Witness, staring with perfect compassion where we can scarcely bear to glance." – Hollis Frampton

A man is supine on a mountain side. Images rush past of nature and a stained glass saint. An infant is born. We see a lactating nipple. Images include a mountain peak, farm buildings, a tree stump, a fire, a crawling baby, and the sun. The man falls and rolls. Then, later, he swings his ax.

Sexual intimacy. Three kinds of images race past, superimposed on each other sometimes: two bodies, a man and a woman's, close up, nude - patches of skin, wisps of hair, glimpses of a face and genitalia; strips of celluloid with lines and squiggles scratched on them; and, close-up shots of what appear to be the insides of living bodies - a heart beating, muscle and sinew and tissue wet with fluids. The exterior and interior of desire.

A man, accompanied by a dog, struggles through snow on a mountain side. We see film stock blister; drawn square shapes appear. Then, we see an infant's face. The images of struggling climber, baby, blurred film stock, large snow flakes, and what may be microscopic details of matter are superimposed on each other, one dominating the frame briefly to be replaced by another. As the man falls in the snow and tries to regain his feet, the baby continues to appear, first with eyes closed. Alternately, images rush by - montages of paper cutouts and life under a microscope.

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 - water, trees, and surfaces too close up to distinguish. He struggles. A fire burns. Nature, in long shots and magnified, is formidable and silent. It's tough going; he carries on. In a capillary, blood flows.

"The first months of marriage, with moments of mutual awareness, frightening understandings, lovemaking." -S.B.

Four young men and a young woman sit in boredom. She smokes while one strums a lute, one looks at a magazine, and two fiddle with string. The door opens and in comes a young man, cigarette between his lips, a swagger on his face. The young woman laughs. As the four young men continue disconnected activities, the other two become a couple. When the four realize something has changed, first they stare at the couple who have kissed and now are dancing slowly. The four run from the house in a kind of frenzy and return to stare. The power of sex has unnerved them.

1945 film by Robert Bresson

The same movie with the same characters, cast and crew as I am Curious (Yellow), but with some different scenes and a different political slant. The political focus in Blue is personal relationships, religion, prisons and sex. Blue omits much of the class consciousness and non-violence interviews of the first version. Yellow and Blue are the colors of the Swedish flag.