Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Will Long
ENGL 4860-001
Term Paper
later adopted him three weeks later. The two had no idea that their adoptive
St
ill
fro
son would become one of the most influential and experimental filmmakers
m
"P
re
lu
d
of all time. According to Bruce Elder, his films typify the independent cinema
e1
"(
19
96
(Elder). Brakhage would go on to direct over 350 films during his life until he died in
)
2003, due to cancer most likely caused by his preferred film dye (By Brakhage). He was
known for his incredibly magical style of editing, in which he would scratch, paint,
overlay other film, or draw directly onto the film in order to create wild effects never
Brakhages legacy lives on in some of his more well-known, yet still deeply
experimental films Dog Star Man (complete 1964, filmed and released in segments 1961-
1964), Mothlight (1963), and Window Water Baby Moving (1959). He was influenced by
Brakhages biggest influences, especially in his early career as a filmmaker. According to Brian Frye,
writing for Senses of Cinema, his invocation of Freudian ideas, while omnipresent, is much blunter than
Derens. For Derens cerebral idealism, Brakhage substitutes a rawer, psychologized version of reality.
Long 2
(France), Ezra Pound (US), and Charles Olson (US); many of his influences are poets, as
he held a desire to be one himself from a young age. Marilyn Brakhage, his widow, states
that she believes his ties to poetry, and also to his studies of music, continued to
contemporary of Lawrence Jordan, John Cage, and Morton Subotnik, even working with
some of them throughout his career. Brakhage has inspired countless filmmakers like
David Lynch, Raymond Salvatore Harmon, Matt Stone, Trey Parker2, Danny Perez, Don
Hertzfeldt, and even Martin Scorsese. While he has attained great recognition throughout
the film world, much of his work, unfortunately, remains underappreciated by the
mainstream. One simply cannot overstate the immense contribution of the monumental,
postmodern creation in a strictly abstract sense, favoring the flow of chaotic, non-
felt that his work was strongest when it made the person feel something from the images
alone, choosing not to work with sound or music throughout his career. Oftentimes,
viewers will choose to soundtrack his work with music they feel fits3. His attitude toward
those who chose to add music was nothing less than somewhat hostile, providing strict
2
Matt Stone and Trey Parker are both known as the creators of the cartoon parody series South Park. They
distorted and through static aesthetic of both made a solid match. I tend to disagree with the idea that his
films shouldnt be played with sound. I find it a bit pretentiousits honestly up to the viewer, but I do think
Brakhage had a point when he declared his preference for the visual spectacle as a stand-alone piece.
Long 3
instructions on how to show his films and making sure that there was no sound at all.
Fred Camper, an artist who was close to the filmmaker tells us, The great majority of
Brakhage films are silent. For those films, please be sure to turn your sound system off
(Camper, Projecting the Films of Stan Brakhage). Brakhage was even quoted as saying,
I now see/feel no more absolute necessity for a sound track than a painter feels the need
Stan). Ironically, his influence on the music world can be experienced when one puts
on the work of bands like Sonic Youth, who did a re-score of several of his films right
after he passed away (recorded in April 2003 and released as SYR6: Koncertas Stan
Brakhage prisiminimui in 2005), and Stereolab, who have a song named after Brakhage
on their album Dots and Loops (Brakhage, September 1997). While Brakhage's work
still remains just below the surface, his influence shows up in many other great and recent
There was a sequence in the new Twin Peaks season (Season 3, Episode 8:
White Light White Heat) that emulates his rapid-cut, fast-paced, abstract style. During
the scene, David Lynch uses scratched-up film that appears as static to visualize the
internal and microscopic processes that occur when atoms split at the moment a nuclear
weapon is detonated. The mirror to this in Brakhages filmography is his use of scratched
up film during the later part of his career, in particular the 1998 film Reel Five,
which depicts black leader for a while and then begins with images of scratches film in
quick succession for several minutes. Other important works by David Lynch, including
his early films and Eraserhead, can count Brakhages use of abstract visuals as an
influence.
Long 4
It's said that Martin Scorsese at one time had frames from some of Brakhage's
work hung up in his office, with one of the final scenes in his film The Last Temptation of
his own films. According to Brakhage, Scorsese is the only one whos gone out of their
way to creditmy work. Hes the only one whos cared enough about film to actually
Danny Perez, notably the director of several music videos and a full-length visual
album (ODDSAC, 2010) for the experimental band Animal Collective, exemplifies the
dressed people. One only has to look as far as the music video he made for Animal
during the course of the bizarre affair, one can see flickers of light on film flash by
quickly as strangely costumed humans dance around an ice sculpture. Techniques like
this, often considered techniques signature of Brakhage, arent too common in cinema, so
when theyre seen, theyre quite a delight to the eyes. Much of the work that Ive seen by
of an ashtray.
a Beautiful Day, Hertzfeldt makes use of Brakhagean film edits with the same purposes
Brakhage had in mind when he made his own films: emotional resonance of the visuals
themselves. In Beautiful Day, the effects are done on what appears to be film stock to
achieve reflection on both the temporal nature of human memory and the effects of
mental illness on worldly perception. The use of visuals to get the story and emotion
across is exemplary of pure cinema, which is a concept Brakhage deeply embraced and
one that hundreds of filmmakers, like Hertzfeldt here, have latched onto in order to
heighten the emotions of their best work (Frye). Hertzfeldt acknowledges Brakhages
influence on his own work in an interview with the Criterion Collection on his favorite
Brakhage also had a (silent of course) film made about both the process and
fallibility of human memory, The Process (1972), in which he explored many of the same
concepts that Hertzfeldt explores in his body of work in a much more straightforward and
less comical way. In Process, we find flashes of solid color interspersed with shots of out
of focus images of people, places, and things, all mashed up in a collage worthy of the
human mind itself; each image, inverted in color, then regular, then followed up by
flashes of colors zipping by represents the burning of the image on the human mind.
However, the images do not last for long, and through the course of the short film, one
gets the sense that the images will not stay in the long run.
consisting of shots of water flowing by the camera lens, half-submerged in cold Colorado
creek water. He went and bought a new camera (a Bolex) and decided to make something
Long 6
new and not quite like anything hed been doing at the
testament to the sentiment of human delicacy, the idea that humans are only here
temporarily and all we leave when we die are impressions, memories, and a legacy.
Just under five years later, he died in 2003 to very little attention, with those hed
influenced paying tribute in small, yet heartfelt ways over the following months. He was
not recognized at the Academy Awards the year he died for his achievements; that would
Long 7
come the next yeara bit too late4. Shortly before he passed on, Brakhage and his second
wife, Marilyn, came to a deal with the Criterion Collection; in his tribute to Brakhage,
film critic Adrian Martin said about the possibility of a collection of Brakhages film,
Brakhage on DVD will never replace the true screen experience of his luminous work,
4
A welcome note here would be to point out that starting in 2005, the Academy did a full restoration and
preservation of many of his films, the most recent being Rounds (2000) in 2014. A list of his works
projects?title=&filmmaker=brakhage&category=All&collection=All
Long 8
Works Cited
Abbott, Rebecca, and Stan Brakhage. The Avant-Garde in American Film: An Interview
digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=shur
eview.
Brakhage, Marilyn. On Stan Brakhage and Visual Music. Vantage Point, 31 Jan. 2008,
vantagepointmagazine.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/on-stan-brakhage-and-visual-
music/.
Camper, Fred. Projecting the Films of Stan Brakhage. Projecting the Films of Stan
Brakhage, www.fredcamper.com/Brakhage/Projection.html.
www.criterion.com/current/posts/272-by-brakhage-the-act-of-seeing.
Elder, Bruce. The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound,
Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012.
EBSCOhost,
Long 9
ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&
db=e000xna&AN=1423959&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/brakhage/.
Ganguly, Suranjan. Stan Brakhage - the 60th Birthday Interview. Film Culture, no. 78,
www.criterion.com/explore/225-don-hertzfeldt-s-top-10.
Jordan, Randolph. Brakhages Silent Legacy for Sound Cinema. Offscreen, Canada
Martin, Arian. Stan Brakhage: A Tribute. Film Critic: Adrian Martin, Mar. 2003,
www.filmcritic.com.au/essays/brakhage.html.
Schenker, Dylan. Original Creators: Stan Brakhage. Creators, Vice Media, 8 Aug.
2011, creators.vice.com/en_us/article/nzd5wk/original-creators-stan-brakhage.
brakhage.