# Stan Brakhage [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Brakhage) (1933–2003) ## Description American filmmaker who produced an enormous body of lyrical, often hand-painted and scratched film exploring vision, perception, and "closed-eye" imagery, becoming the central figure of the American lyrical avant-garde and one of the most influential filmmakers of the postwar period. ## Key Tags #lyrical #film-poem #camera-less #drawn-on-film ## Essential Works - `[Dog Star Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Star_Man)` (1961-64) - multi-part epic of superimposed, hand-processed imagery on birth, death, and cosmic cycle - `[Mothlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothlight)` (1963) - camera-less film made by pressing moth wings and plant matter directly onto film stock - `[Window Water Baby Moving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Water_Baby_Moving)` (1959) - diaristic film of childbirth central to his early lyrical style - The Text of Light (1974) - studied light refracted through a crystal ashtray; discussed at length in [[Light-Play and the Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film]] ## Details Quote from [[Light Moving in Time]]: "The artist has carried the tradition of vision and visualization down through the ages. In the present time a very few have continued the process of visual perception in its deepest sense and transformed their inspiration into cinematic expression. —Stan Brakhage, [[Metaphors on Vision]]" ### Concepts and Theories - [[Flicker and Entoptics]] - his hand-painted and "closed-eye" films engage entoptic and retinal vision directly as subject matter ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Drawn on Film]] - extensive body of hand-painted and scratched-on-film work ### Collaborators %% none yet %% ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Brakhage, Stan. *Metaphors on Vision*. Film Culture, 1963. See [[Metaphors on Vision]] for full annotation. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography - [[R. Bruce Elder]] (230 - Individuals) - extensive critical writing analyzing Brakhage's work in *Harmony + Dissent*. ### Cited In - [[Expanded Cinema]] (240 - Primary Sources) - cited as an exemplar of synaesthetic/syncretic montage in Part Two. - [[Light-Play and the Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film]] (240 - Primary Sources) - discusses *The Text of Light* at length.