Stan Brakhage — Director (160)
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My Mountain: Song 27 (1968) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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.
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Prelude 5 (1995) IMDb TMDB
Prelude 5
director: Stan Brakhage
This section is very similar to Prelude 4 except that it is composed of extremely thin-lined colors and sharply delineated shapes which are constantly interrupted by "cloud"-like forms.
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Sexual Meditation: Office Suite (1972) IMDb TMDB
Sexual Meditation: Office Suite
director: Stan Brakhage
This film evolves from several years’ observation of the sexual energy which charges the world of business and the qualities of palatial environ which this energy often creates. It is one of the most perfect films it has been given to me to make. – S.B.
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Prelude 1 (1995) IMDb TMDB
Prelude 1
director: Stan Brakhage
Turquoise and maroon-toned thin lines of paint are interspersed with variously toned circular "watermarks" of blotched paint giving-way to multi-colored brush strokes and finally fulsomely darkened and thickened brush-strokes which then thin to something akin to the beginning.
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Lovemaking (1968) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Lovemaking
director: Stan Brakhage
A film about the naturalness of sexuality. Its four sequences feature heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking, dogs copulating, and naked childen at play.
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23rd Psalm Branch: Part I (1967) IMDb TMDB
23rd Psalm Branch: Part I
director: Stan Brakhage
In this haunting but lyrical meditation on war, Brakhage intercuts 8-mm footage of Colorado with imagery from WWII newsreels. He responds to the violence and nightmare of war by painting directly on the filmstrip.
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Prelude 2 (1996) IMDb Douban
Prelude 2
director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
Interplay of toned rectangular shapes, vertical and horizontal and diagonal lines in juxtaposition with hardened darker shapes which gradually shift tone and lighten until ending on thin blues.
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Interim (1952) IMDb Douban
Interim
director: 斯坦·布拉哈格 actor: Walter Newcomb / Janice Hubka
other title: 间歇期
A young man meets a young woman under a bridge by a railroad. They shelter from the rain and exchange a kiss. The man grows sullen and leaves. The film starts with him and ends with her. It’s a straightforward anecdote told in traditional ways, the likes of which he’d forsake forever; that is, it uses actors, a soundtrack with music and post-dubbed sound effects, a photographer who frames everything professionally and a coherent edited narrative.