stan brakhage

for part of our experimental film unit, we're supposed to research an experimental filmmaker. i'm lookin up stuff about stan brakhage who according to wikipedia was "one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century" (so, wooo stan, way to go). he called his stuff "visual music" or "moving visual thinking." um, the semi-disturbing thing i found out about him was that in 1996, he got bladder cancer. so, which his bladder was removed. ummm... that's really odd and i don't know... did he wear a diaper or something after that? supposedly the coal-tar dyes he used to paint his films prior to '96 had caused his cancer. i hoping this is one of those "wiki-isms" or whatever that people make up and post for laughs.

the first video of his i came across is "mothlight" (1963). i thought one of the things that was really nifty about this was his ability to keep the same thing projected slide after slide-- like the part with the parsley leaves (or clovers?). i noticed during my experimental film making with 16mm film didn't have that quality. it all seemed pretty random... there wasn't really anything to focus on or think about.




another movie i found was "black ice" (1994). i like this one a lot more. i think it's cause if color's going to be used than it should be really vibrant (if not, there's not much use for color in my mind... unless it's just a touch to black&white i suppose). it reminded me of stain glass windows. one thing that made it really interesting was that it seemed to be zooming in, while other parts were flashing... i think that'd kind of difficult if it's 16mm (and my thought it is).