Movie

Arabic Numeral Series 4 (1981) IMDb TMDB

Arabic Numeral Series 4

director: Stan Brakhage

“With some exceptions, the Arabics take the idea of the void as their ground. That is, the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness, or occasionally against white, these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness. But the darkness is not ‘night,’ or even simply some more abstract absence of light, but a more profound vacuum: it represents a world stripped of all the coordinates of the known, an unmeasurable absence. […] These lushly sensual, pleasurable-to-view films are also terrifying: their unpredictability, continually enacting new dramas of surprise, alternatively swamps the viewer in light and leaves him adrift in darkness.”

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The Way to Shadow Garden (1954) WikiData IMDb TMDB

The Way to Shadow Garden

director: Stan Brakhage actor: Walter Newcomb

This way madness - or experimental filmmaking - lies. A solitary man in coat and tie enters an apartment. It's midnight. He appears agitated and distraught. He throws a glass of water in his face and laughs. He takes off the coat and tie. His moods swing. He stares at a light bulb. He removes his shirt. He lights a cigarette. He looks at a book. He does something drastic and self-destructive. He opens doors to a garden.

Movie

23rd Psalm Branch: Part II (1967) IMDb TMDB

23rd Psalm Branch: Part II

director: Stan Brakhage actor: Peter Kubelka

The second part: Brakhage’s layering of images spends less time with images of war, and begins filtering in scenes of Vienna and his home in Colorado. He sets up a comparison between “Kubelka’s Vienna” and his own.

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Scenes from Under Childhood (1970) TMDB

Scenes from Under Childhood

director: Stan Brakhage

A visualization of the inner world of foetal beginnings, the infant, the baby, the child – a shattering of the ‘myths of childhood’ through revelation of the extremes of violent terror and overwhelming joy of that world darkened to most adults by their sentimental remembering of it… a ‘tone poem’ for the eye – very inspired by the music of Olivier Messiaen.

Movie

Persian Series #18 (2001) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #18

director: Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #18 is almost calligraphic in its overlays of dark (occasionally colored) glyphs backed by brilliant color motifs.

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Persian Series #17 (2001) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #17

director: Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #17 is a series of quite distinct globules of paint brilliantly colored and shifting as if vertically in the plane (as different from the more horizontally oriented previous parts).

Movie

Persian Series #16 (2001) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #16

director: Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #16 is an even more exaggerated contrast of color and black-and-white patterning.

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Persian Series #15 (2001) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #15

director: Stan Brakhage

Persian Series #15 is a rapid shift of patterns black & white playing off against muted coils of color.

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Persian Series #12 (2000) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #12

director: Stan Brakhage

"Hot" by-play of reds-greens-yellows in black, blurred, finally, as the color shapes are shifted violently from side to side, finally ending of a sharp entanglement of multicolored twig-like and/or stem-like forms.

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Persian Series #10 (2000) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #10

director: 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.

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Persian Series #6 (2000) IMDb TMDB

Persian Series #6

director: 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) TMDB

Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself

director: 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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.

Movie

Sexual Meditation: Hotel (1972) 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.