Stan Brakhage one of the great innovators of modern avant-garde cinema; he was among the first filmmakers to physically alter the filmstrip itself for metaphorical effect.
Avant-garde filmmaking was irrevocably altered by Brakhage and many of his techniques; working directly with the film stock itself, he has occasionally painted, inked, scratched and dyed images onto it; creating a dazzling and often hypnotic effect. His experimental films, mostly short, have often been concerned with the manipulation of light.
The sheer virtuosity of his work, the sensual beauty of his films’ shapes and colors and textures, his creation of a unique and complex kind of visual music.
Brakhage single-handedly transformed the schism separating the avant-garde from classical filmmaking into a chasm. His films offer a chance to see and experience what film is truly capable of achieving outside the mainstream.
One small detail of Brakhage's work that all too often gets left out is that his films are stunningly, even ravishingly beautiful. It's no easy or static prettiness that he was after, but the kind of beauty that cleans out one's sensorium, that seems to scour one's sight all the way from the cornea to the optic nerve, that reorients the very way one sees. Brakhage's films serve as eye-training, both for seeing other films and as an opening onto more imaginative ways of seeing the world.
Stan Brakhage: DOG STAR MAN - PRELUDE:
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