1963 was a pivotal year in the history of avant-garde film in the United States. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney calls it “the high point of the mythopoeic development within the American avant-garde.” He explains:
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
- 10/1/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Strangely Ordinary This DevotionHello Danny and Fern, I'll start with personal news: the bad news is that I've had to significantly cut down my over-ambitious pre-tiff schedule to recuperate from several days worth of sensory overload. The good news is that my ankle is healing! Here is some bad Tiff news: for all I said in my last correspondence about contradictions, I wanted to add a belated disclaimer. Sometimes plot (and more importantly, thought) holes are nothing more than just that. Though it starts with a bang, former Veep show-runner Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin trips over its own footing with a flimsy jab at the legacy of its own subject, smugly presented as an original hot take. In Iannucci's Communist Russia, the Soviet Union's top players are man-children with no backbone. Together, these bumbling idiots (played by a cast of stuttering, screaming Americans and Brits) mourn their...
- 9/14/2017
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe tend not to post much news about films currently in production, but we must admit our desire to share the bare details of Phoenix director Christian Petzold's new feature film, Transit, pictured above.Critic Godfrey Cheshire has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a handsome looking monograph on contemporary Iranian cinema.Recommended VIEWINGWith Twin Peaks: The Return currently unfolding, its profound oddness has sent many of us diving backwards into David Lynch's past work, remembering he is a visual artist first and foremost, one who has worked in serial television, narrative cinema, and, yes, commercial advertisement. This video usefully gathers all ads Lynch has made, from his 1988 add for Calvin Klein to his (brilliant) Dior ad from 2010 starring Marion Cotillard.A '90s cinema throwback! Lars von Trier introducing the Dogme...
- 6/20/2017
- MUBI
Ken Jacobs. Photo by María Meseguer.This past June in A Coruña, Spain (S8) 6th Mostra de Cinema Periferico hosted a retrospective of Ken Jacobs. A legend of experimental filmmaking, this New Yorker gave a master-class about the influence of abstract paintings on his work, presented a broad selection of films in his filmography to the audience, and premiered New Paintings by Ken Jacobs (2015), a new film performance using his famous Nervous Magic Lantern, consisting of a series of abstract slides that he projects with a special device of his own creation. The program focused on Jacobs’ first films, close to a kind of Brakhage-like documentary style, the long series he made along with Jack Smith as an actor/performer, and his experiments with 3D, both in film and digital formats. After all these screenings, we had a coffee or two with him and talked about the films in the program.
- 6/30/2015
- by Víctor Paz Morandeira
- MUBI
If nothing else, I owe Stan Brakhage for my irrational fear of childbirth ever since I was forced to sit through a collegiate projection of Window Water Baby Moving. Often polarizing for those new to the medium, it’s impossible to deny Brakhage’s ingenuity in his tactile use of film. His oeuvre seems to erase the boundary between method and the means by which to achieve it, which becomes all the more peculiar once you seem him in action. Phil Solomon, a fellow experimental filmmaker and collaborator, has uploaded a handful of videos of Brakhage, in the classroom and out, which The Seventh Art says will serve as the basis […]...
- 8/21/2014
- by Sarah Salovaara
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
If nothing else, I owe Stan Brakhage for my irrational fear of childbirth ever since I was forced to sit through a collegiate projection of Window Water Baby Moving. Often polarizing for those new to the medium, it’s impossible to deny Brakhage’s ingenuity in his tactile use of film. His oeuvre seems to erase the boundary between method and the means by which to achieve it, which becomes all the more peculiar once you seem him in action. Phil Solomon, a fellow experimental filmmaker and collaborator, has uploaded a handful of videos of Brakhage, in the classroom and out, which The Seventh Art says will serve as the basis […]...
- 8/21/2014
- by Sarah Salovaara
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Moms have been an important part of cinema since the beginning, as one of the first humans to appear in a film was Sarah Whitley, mother-in-law of inventor/director Louis Le Prince, in the extremely short 1888 work Roundhay Garden Scene. Since then, we’ve had mothers serving important roles in quintessential masterpieces of Soviet cinema (Mother), Bollywood (Mother India), experimental film (Window Water Baby Moving), animated features (Bambi, Dumbo, etc.), documentary (Grey Gardens), political thriller (The Manchurian Candidate), science fiction (The Terminator), horror (Psycho, Friday the 13th, Carrie, etc.), comedy (The Graduate) and of course melodrama (the whole maternal subgenre). And we’ve all grown up identifying with certain movie moms, and actresses who often played moms; for me they were usually portrayed by Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Dee Wallace Stone and Diane Wiest. Therefore it would be an enormous task and read if I were to attempt to either list all or narrow down the best...
- 5/12/2013
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
On one level, reviewing Criterion's By Brakhage: An Anthology Blu-Ray box set is a straightforward task. This three Blu-Ray set is the largest collection of Stan Brakhage's works available on home video. Whats more, the presentation is of the highest possible quality. The difficulty of reviewing this release is multi-fold. The box contains over 11 hours worth of materials. Additionally, the relentlessly abstract nature of these films renders the formal critical toolkit inapplicable. So, instead of the usual approach, this review will focus on two major tasks: providing an overview of Stan Brakhage's films and examining Criterion's presentation of the films.
Stan Brakhage was an avant-garde filmmaker who created over 350 films between 1952 and 2003. His works, most of which were silent, generally involved some form of collage using 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm stock. He often mixed original footage, news reels and stock footage that ranged from the mundane to the surprisingly frank.
Stan Brakhage was an avant-garde filmmaker who created over 350 films between 1952 and 2003. His works, most of which were silent, generally involved some form of collage using 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm stock. He often mixed original footage, news reels and stock footage that ranged from the mundane to the surprisingly frank.
- 6/9/2010
- Screen Anarchy
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This is the 4th post in a series covering the most outrageous moments in underground film history. You can follow the entire series here.
Film: Window Water Baby Moving
Director: Stan Brakhage
Year: 1959
Today, having an excited father-to-be stand in the delivery room with a camera in hand to record the momentous occasion of his child being born is a commonplace concept. In 1958 … not so much.
Underground filmmaker Stan Brakhage desperately wanted to film his wife Jane give birth to their first daughter, Myrrena. In an article written later for the magazine Film Culture, Jane explained that she and Stan had found a doctor who was enthusiastic about the prospect of the birth being recorded on 16mm film. In fact, the doctor suggested it to them first before they could spring the idea on him!
But, the hospital absolutely refused to allow the proud, film-crazy papa in because men just...
Film: Window Water Baby Moving
Director: Stan Brakhage
Year: 1959
Today, having an excited father-to-be stand in the delivery room with a camera in hand to record the momentous occasion of his child being born is a commonplace concept. In 1958 … not so much.
Underground filmmaker Stan Brakhage desperately wanted to film his wife Jane give birth to their first daughter, Myrrena. In an article written later for the magazine Film Culture, Jane explained that she and Stan had found a doctor who was enthusiastic about the prospect of the birth being recorded on 16mm film. In fact, the doctor suggested it to them first before they could spring the idea on him!
But, the hospital absolutely refused to allow the proud, film-crazy papa in because men just...
- 1/16/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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