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Dog Star Man is a series of short experimental films, all directed by Stan Brakhage, featuring Jane Wodening. It was released in instalments between 1961 and 1964 and comprises a prelude and four parts. In 1992, Dog Star Man was included in its entirety in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation.
James Stanley Brakhage was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s and which developed into the Structural/materialist films in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Window Water Baby Moving is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, filmed in November 1958 and released in 1959. The film documents the birth of the director's first child, Myrrena, by his then-wife Jane Brakhage, now Jane Wodening.
Wavelength is a 1967 Canadian-American short subject by experimental filmmaker and artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."
Marie Menken was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite. She was noted for her unique filming style that incorporated collage. She was one of the first New York filmmakers to use a hand-held camera and trained Andy Warhol on its use. Her film Glimpse of the Garden was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Mothlight is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1963. The film was created without the use of a camera.
Storm de Hirsch (1912–2000) was an American poet and filmmaker. She was a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1960s, and one of the founding members of the Film-Makers' Cooperative. Although often overlooked by historians, in recent years she has been recognized as a pioneer of underground cinema.
Philip Stewart Solomon was an American experimental filmmaker noted for his work with both film and video. In recent years, Solomon had earned acclaim for a series of films that incorporate machinima made using games from the Grand Theft Auto series. His films are often described as haunting and lyrical.
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Fire of Waters is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, produced in 1965.
The film-poem is a label first applied to American avant-garde films released after World War II. During this time, the relationship between film and poetry was debated. James Peterson in Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order said, "In practice, the film poem label was primarily an emblem of the avant-garde's difference from the commercial narrative film." Peterson reported that in the 1950s, overviews of avant-garde films "generally identified two genres: the film poem and the graphic cinema". By the 1990s, the avant-garde cinema encompassed the term "film-poem" in addition to different strains of filmmaking. Film-poems are considered "personal films" and are seen "as autonomous, standing apart from traditions and genres". They are "an open, unpredictable experience" due to eschewing extrinsic expectations based on commercial films. Peterson said, "The viewer's cycles of anticipation and satisfaction derive primarily from the film's intrinsic structure." The film-poems are personal as well as private: "Many film poems document intimate moments of the filmmaker's life."
Jane Wodening is an American artist and writer. She is best known for her collaborations with experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, to whom she was married from 1957 until 1987. During this period, she was known as Jane Brakhage. Wodening featured in Brakhage's short film Window Water Baby Moving, in which her husband filmed her giving birth.
Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection is a 1953 American short film directed by Stan Brakhage. Shot while in Brakhage's native Denver, the film stars Larry Jordan who later went on to become a film director. Filming was done in Nevadaville, Colorado. Like his other films at the time, it was shot on 16mm film, is black and white and features no dialogue.
The End is a 1953 American short film directed by Christopher Maclaine. It tells the stories of six people on the last day of their lives. It premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of Frank Stauffacher's Art in Cinema series. Though the film met audience disapproval at its premiere, it was praised by critics as a "masterpiece" and "a great work of art".
Anticipation of the Night is a 1958 American avant-garde film directed by Stan Brakhage. It was a breakthrough in the development of the lyrical style Brakhage used in his later films.
References
- 1 2 3 Elder, R. Bruce (1998) The films of Stan Brakhage in the American tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, p133-4
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Barr, William R. (1999) "Brakhage: Artistic Development in Two Childbirth Films," Film quarterly: forty years, a selection, University of California Press, p536-541
- 1 2 Peterson, James (1994) Dreams of chaos, visions of order: understanding the American avante-garde cinema, Wayne State University Press, p63-4
- ↑ Brakhage Scrapbook: Stan Brakhage Collected Writings 1964-1980, edited by Robert A. Haller (1982) New York: Documentext, p253
- ↑ Sally Banes (1993) Greenwich Village 1963: avant-garde performance and the effervescent body, Duke University Press, p229
- ↑ Peterson, James (1996) "Is a Cognitive Approach to the Avant-garde Cinema Perverse?", Post-theory: reconstructing film studies, University of Wisconsin Press, p111
- ↑ Dillon, Steven (2004) Derek Jarman and lyric film: the mirror and the sea, University of Texas Press, p30