The Brakhage lectures: Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein

by Stan Brakhage

Paperback film criticism

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

106 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

James Stanley Brakhage, better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.

Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large and diverse body of work, exploring a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Interested in mythology and inspired by music, poetry, and visual phenomena, Brakhage sought to reveal the universal in the particular, exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality and innocence.

Brakhage's films are often noted for their expressiveness and lyricism.

Reviews

[Boris Gregoric · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is bad stream of consciousness. Writing at best self-therapeutic, at worst incoherent, seemingly, if not randomly, inspired by very common place auteurs from the previous film historical paradigm.

Sadly, watching some of Brakhage's own experimental projects with camera, left me equally unconvinced.

Maybe photography was in the stars?