Stan Brakhage — Director (160)

Movie

Eye Myth (1967) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Eye Myth
★ 8.7 (6 ratings) director: Stan Brakhage
other title: 眼之谜 / Eyemyth
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.

Movie

Night Music (1986) IMDb TMDB Douban
Night Music
other title: 夜间音乐
”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.

Movie

Comingled Containers (2004) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Comingled Containers
★ 8.2 (11 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 混合容器 / Commingled Containers
Comingled Containers is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage. "This 'return to photography' (after several years of only painting film) was made on the eve of cancer surgery - a kind of 'last testament,' if you will… an envisionment of the fleeting complexity of worldly phenomenon."

Movie

Black Ice (2003) IMDb TMDB Douban
Black Ice
director: Stan Brakhage
other title: 黑冰
Inspired by a bad fall on a patch of black ice (that ultimately resulted in Brakhage's need for eye surgery), the filmmaker gives us something of a dreamlike descent through the fear and refractions of closed-eye vision regarding such an event.

Movie

Stellar (1993) IMDb TMDB Douban
Stellar
★ 9.4 (7 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 恒星
This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.

Movie

Chinese Series (2003) IMDb TMDB Douban
Chinese Series
★ 9.2 (5 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 中国系列
Stan Brakhage's final film, made shortly before his death by wetting a filmstrip with saliva and using his fingernail to scratch marks into the emulsion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

Movie

The Dark Tower (1999) IMDb TMDB Douban
The Dark Tower
This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with streaks of light and vibrantly colored forms. There appears, frame center, the tapered shape of a tower-- An imposing silhouette against the backdrop of the flaring sky.

Movie

The Dante Quartet (2004) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
The Dante Quartet
★ 8.0 (9 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 但丁四重奏
“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.

Movie

Dog Star Man: Part I (2004) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Dog Star Man: Part I
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.

Movie

I...Dreaming (2004) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
I...Dreaming
★ 8.0 (7 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格 actor: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 我……做梦 / 我梦想 …
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.

Movie

Glaze of Cathexis (1990) IMDb TMDB Douban
Glaze of Cathexis
★ 8.3 (6 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格
other title: 全神贯注的凝视
”This hand-painted work is easily the most minutely detailed ever given to me to do, for it traces (as best I'm able) the hypnagogic after-effect of psychological cathexis as designated by Freud in his first (and unfinished) book on the subject, Toward a Scientific Psychology." -S.B.

Movie

Window Water Baby Moving (1959) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Window Water Baby Moving
★ 7.8 (12 ratings) director: 斯坦·布拉哈格 actor: Jane Brakhage / Myrrena Brakhage …
other title: 水窗中的颤动婴儿 / 水窗颤婴
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。

Movie

Kindering (1987) IMDb TMDB Douban
Kindering
director: 斯坦·布拉哈格 actor: Iona Bartek / Quay Bartek
other title: 儿童游戏
"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.

Movie

Untitled (For Marilyn) (1992) IMDb TMDB Douban
For Marilyn
director: Stan Brakhage
other title: 为了玛丽莲 / For Marilyn
"An untitled hand-painted film - a phynagogic four-part thought process interwoven with scratched words in thanks to and praise of God." - S.B.

Movie

Prelude: Dog Star Man (1962) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Prelude: Dog Star Man
other title: 狗·星·人:序曲 / 狗星人序曲
A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.