The Text of Light

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The Text of Light
Directed by Stan Brakhage
CinematographyStan Brakhage
Distributed byNew York Filmmakers Cooperative
Canyon Cinema
Release date
  • October 26, 1974 (1974-10-26)
Running time
67 minutes
Country United States

The Text of Light is a 1974 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.

Contents

Synopsis

Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures, [1] shot entirely through a glass ashtray. [2]

Reception

The film premiered at the Carnegie Museum of Art on October 26, 1974, as the museum's first program in the Sarah Scaife Gallery. Jonas Mekas described it as a "Cathedral of Light" which "is made up of little fragments of refracted light, fluctuating with tiny movements, and sometimes swift movements." [3] Take One reviewer Bob Cowan panned it, calling it "a kind of visual Muzak" in which "any subtlety of movement within the frame is destroyed by shaky camera movements and abrupt cutting." [4] The film is considered an "epistemological meditation": "This uncommon lens [that is the glass ashtray] generates an equally uncommon image of the world. The density and shape of the glass subtracts linear perspective from the visual field. In this respect, the ash-tray takes up part of the function of rapid camera movements and zooms in other Brakhage films insofar as the ash-tray demolishes perspective. As well, in Text of Light objects lose their individuation, their outlines blurred in masses of light and color." [5] A presentation by Jonathan P. Watts for the Tate underlines the influence of Turner on this film: "In The Text of Light Turner’s influence is felt in the experimental use of colour, and is similarly visionary in the way it collapses naturalistic pictorial space." [6]

References

  1. ↑ Martha Schwendenerost (2015-10-15). "Aldo Tambellini's 'Atlantic in Brooklyn' Chronicles a Grittier Time". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2018-01-04. Retrieved 2018-01-04. Car headlights and taillights become abstract orbs, similar to Stan Brakhage's experimental film "The Text of Light" (1974)
  2. ↑ "Stan Brakhage: The Text of Light". Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 2018-01-04. Retrieved 2018-01-04.
  3. ↑ Mekas, Jonas (November 14, 1974). "Movie Journal". The Village Voice . Vol. 19, no. 46. pp. 96–97.
  4. ↑ Cowan, Bob (March 1977). "Notes from the New Cinema". Take One . Vol. 5, no. 8. p. 36.
  5. ↑ Carroll, Noel, ed. (1998), "Text of Light", Interpreting the Moving Image, Cambridge Studies in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 225–227, ISBN   978-0-521-58970-3 , retrieved 2023-06-10
  6. ↑ Watts, Jonathan P. "Into the light with JMW Turner – Tate Etc". Tate. Retrieved 2023-06-10.


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