Stan Brakhage: Interviews

by Suranjan Ganguly (Editor)

Overview

In this volume, editor Suranjan Ganguly collects eight of Stan Brakhage's most important interviews in which the filmmaker describes his conceptual frameworks; his theories of vision and sound; the importance of poetry, music, and the visual arts in relation to his work; his concept of the muse; and the key influences on his art-making. In doing so, Brakhage (1933-2003) discusses some of his iconic films, such as Anticipation of the Night, Dog Star Man, Scenes from Under Childhood, Mothlight, and The Text of Light.

One of the most innovative filmmakers in the history of experimental cinema, Brakhage made almost 350 films in his fifty-two-year-long career. These films include psychodramas, autobiography, Freudian trance films, birth films, song cycles, meditations on light, and hand-painted films, which range from nine seconds to over four hours in duration. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he lived most of his life in the mountains of Colorado, teaching for twenty-one years in the film studies program at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

As a filmmaker, Brakhage's life-long obsession with what he called an "adventure in perception" made him focus on the act of seeing itself, which he tried to capture on film in multiple ways both with and without his camera and by scratching and painting on film. Convinced that there is a primary level of cognition that precedes language, he wrote of the "untutored eye" with which children can access ineffable visual realities. Adults, who have lost such primal sight, can "retrain" their eyes by becoming conscious of what constitutes true vision and the different ways in which they daily perceive the world. Brakhage's films experiment with such perceptions, manipulating visual and auditory experience in ways that continue to influence film today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496823328
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	06/27/2019
Series:	Conversations with Filmmakers Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	198
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Suranjan Ganguly is professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and director of the Brakhage Center.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chronology xiv

Selected Filmography xvii

Interview with Stan Brakhage Adams Sitney / 1963 3

Stan and Jane Brakhage, Talking Hollis Frampton / 1973 29

On Filming Light Forrest Williams / 1974 51

All That Is Light: Brakhage at 60 Suranjan Ganguly / 1992-1993 66

Stan Brakhage: The 60th Birthday Interview Suranjan Ganguly / 1992-1993 76

Stan Brakhage Scott MacDonald / 1996-2002 96

Another Way of Looking at the Universe Ronald Johnson (with Jim Shedden) / 1997 124

With Stan Brakhage Philip Taaffe / 1997 130

Interview with Stan Brakhage Pip Chodorov / 2003 145

Additional Resources 160

Index 164