Stan Brakhage — Director (171)

Movie

The Dante Quartet (2004)
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★ 8.0 9 ratings
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)
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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)
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★ 8.0 7 ratings
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)
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★ 8.3 6 ratings
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

Kindering (1987)
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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)
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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)
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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.