Stan Brakhage Movie Trailers

Absence Trailer (1976)

26 December 1976

"This film is about 'nothing.' Hints of dramatic 'loss' are imaged throughout, but the primary effect of the film is to give, through fleeting and ephemeral visions, a sense of something which almost exists but unhappily doesn't.

Thot-Fal'N Trailer (1978)

27 June 1978

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought.

The Female Mystique and Spare Leaves (for Gordon) Trailer (1998)

01 January 1998

Here are a couple films from the mid-'60s, given to Gordon Rosenblum at the time, which surfaced this year needing preservation.

My Mtn. Song 27 Part II: Rivers Trailer (1969)

12 April 1969

Second Part of Song 27 (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

Salome Trailer (1980)

01 January 1980

Portrait of the great chess master, aesthetician, human being, Eugene Salome.

Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages Trailer (2022)

21 September 2022

This very special film features a carefully curated selection of some of the priceless messages that have graced Anthology’s voicemail system over the years.

Arabic Numeral Series 2 Trailer (1981)

17 January 1981

“With some exceptions, the Arabics take the idea of the void as their ground. That is, the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness, or occasionally against white, these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness.

The Weir-Falcon Saga Trailer (1970)

09 September 1970

The term "The Weir-Falcon Saga" appeared to me, night after night, at the end of a series of dreams: I was "true" to the feeling, tho not the images, of those dreams in the editing of this and the following two films.

Short Films 1975: #1 (Jane’s Memory) Trailer (1975)

01 January 1975

Begins with blue negative face of child, ends with single centered eye.

Black Vision Trailer (1965)

10 August 1965

"... is inspired by the only passage in Jean Paul Sartre's writings which has ever specifically concerned me – the passage from Nausea wherein the protagonist sits in a park and imagines his suicide.

Roman Numeral: I Trailer (1979)

05 July 1979

An attempt to conjure pictorially, from the mind, an image that isn't referential: "...I'd like to give something back, not a picture of a flower, but some flower that couldn't exist except on film.

Rounds Trailer (2001)

01 January 2001

ROUNDS is a hand-painted film composed of a series of film loops printed in such a fashion that, while there is a feeling of repetitive familiarity, no actual example of specific repetition is easily seeable.

Spring Cycle Trailer (1995)

01 January 1995

This is a hand-painted, step-printed (with a variety of effects) film which begins with rock-like earth-toned shapes in darkness, followed by increasingly lighter pastel-colored mini-boulder forms to the right and left of the frame mimicking a whitish vertical tunneling (giving the illusion the viewer is moving upward, finally).

Gift Trailer (1973)

25 December 1973

A “found object of paint and mold” given to Brakhage by the poet David Meltzer. According to Jane Brakhage, Stan did nothing to it but see it, splice it, and add titles.

Nodes Trailer (1981)

04 May 1981

"nodus knot, node - more at NET) ... 4a: a point at which subsidiary parts originate or center ... 5: a point, line, or surface of a vibrating body that is free or relatively free from vibratory motion.

Short Films 1975: #8 (Small Town Streets) Trailer (1975)

01 January 1975

Begins with white lamp post, green tree leaves, and window, ends with flashing window light on brown wall of motel room.

Sincerity I Trailer (1973)

20 May 1973

This, the first completed reel of work-in-progress, draws on autobiographical energies and images which reflect the first 20 years of my living.

Roman Numeral: IX Trailer (1980)

01 January 1980

This is the most absolute. – S.B.

Looking at Forest of Bliss Trailer (2000)

13 May 2000

Director Robert Gardner and legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage share an in-depth viewing of Gardner's ethnographic masterwork, Forest of Bliss.

I... Trailer (1995)

13 October 1995

By painting and scratching directly on celluloid strips and then duplicating each image for two or more frames, Brakhage produced a flickering cycle of abstract shapes that bespeak the restlessness of his own character and sensibility; the titles of the segments (which Brakhage also intended to function as freestanding films) further emphasize his rejection of collective thinking in favor of personal vision.

Scenes from Under Childhood, Section Three Trailer (1969)

19 December 1969

RR Trailer (1981)

01 January 1981

This film is a mix of landscape images seen from train windows and the patterned shapes and shifting tones of moving-visual-thought thus prompted; it was inspired by Robert Breer's FUJI.

Ephemeral Solidity Trailer (1993)

01 January 1993

This is one of the most elaborately edited of all the hand-painted films of late - a Haydenesque complexity of thematic variations on a totally visual (i.

Tortured Dust Part 3 Trailer (1984)

13 April 1984

While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

Micro-Garden Trailer (2001)

13 October 2001

Red and ephemeral blue and purple plant shapes half-curled against a tan ground, which begins to flash white cracks in dried mud patterns.

In Consideration of Pompeii Trailer (1995)

01 January 1995

Since the age of 17/18, I've been haunted by the catastrophe of Pompeii – beginning with photographs (sold as pornography in high school) of the mummified lovers caught in coitus and preserved by the volcanic ash, revivified by many ghostly photographic books, but especially illuminated by Donald Sutherland's accounts and images from first hand experience of the ruins.

Cannot Not Exist Trailer (1994)

01 January 1994

In this non-orange negative of a hand-painted film, a series of luminously pastel shapes – often patches of color against a stark white background – are interspersed with nearly black intermittent smudges punctuating white.

Purity and After Trailer (1978)

01 January 1978

Two short films, the first NOT about purity itself, whatever that might be, but rather an equivalent of the process of searching for purity in the mind .

Bird Trailer (1978)

01 January 1978

This portrait of a guinea fowl is the first clear vision I've had of the hot-blooded dinosaurs still living among us.

Duplicity I Trailer (1978)

01 January 1978

A friend of many years' acquaintance showed me the duplicity of myself. And, midst guilt and anxiety, I came to see that duplicity often shows itself forth in semblance of sincerity.

For Stan Trailer (2009)

07 April 2009

For Stan is a tribute film shot by Marilyn Brakhage of her husband at work with his camera in the late 1980s and early 90s – illuminating their close relationship.

Last Hymn to the Night - Novalis Trailer (1997)

01 January 1997

“I tried to imagine what the last hymn to Novalis’s night had been if it was beyond language. (…) is the most elaborate hand painted film I’ve ever made”.

Sincerity IV Trailer (1979)

10 February 1979

This, the sixth film of the SINCERITY/DUPLICITY series, seems rooted in the earliest tradition of my work, Psycho-Drama, as well as in the most recent, Imagnostic, directions taken.

Worm and Web Love Trailer (1999)

01 January 1999

WORM AND WEB LOVE begins with bracketed light, a throbbing worm in the sand and sea foam mixed with grass and oceanic detritus, soon superimposed upon the dark blue-toned face of a man, then a woman (Michael McClure and Amy Evans McClure), each seen, then on, through superimpositions of drifting smoke and the back-lit stark grid of a spider's web.

Tortured Dust Part 1 Trailer (1984)

13 April 1984

While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

Pittsburgh Trailer (1959)

04 April 1959

Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Bicentennial Association to celebrate the city’s 200th anniversary, PITTSBURGH was created by a team of filmmakers that included Stan Brakhage (working under the pseudonym James Stanley), Weegee, Len Lye, and Stan Vanderbeek, and photographers W.

The Earth Song of the Cricket Trailer (1999)

26 February 1999

This is a hand-painted work whose shapes are scratched on black leader filled with varieties of color: the resultant shapes tend to suggest insect-like movements, a rub of bent-lines together suggesting the electric hind legs of the cricket, whose movements engender (thru elaborate step-printing) quick pull-backs within frames of the film, so contrived as to create visual agitron lines within the zoom-like effect whose rhythm approximates a cricket's repetitive sound.

Ascension Trailer (2002)

11 September 2002

Ascension begins by superimposing paintings that look like clouds over extremely close views of mottled paint, peculiarly intimate in their three-dimensionality.

Babylon Series #1 Trailer (1989)

10 December 1989

After a six -or seven- year study of Hammurabi's Code, original Babylonian Text and translation, I've tried to feel my way into the moving visual thought process of this ancient culture (whose numerical system is composed primarily of building materials, nails, joints and the like): this, then, is a visual music which balances the two thought processes of Structure and Nature.

The "Lost" Films Trailer (1995)

01 January 1995

They are travelogues in photographic fact and in the mind. Unable to afford printing them, I had stuck them in a drawer.

Sexual Saga Trailer (1996)

01 January 1996

This hand-painted step-printed film begins with "explosions" of white, yellow, orange (deepening into reds), vermillion, and darker red flame shapes.

The One Romantic Venture of Edward Trailer (1956)

01 January 1956

The young man, played by Stan Brakhage, gets himself into a seriously comic mix-up by indulging in semi-sexual fantasies, and allowing the fantasies to take over.

Tortured Dust Part 2 Trailer (1984)

13 April 1984

While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

Abstract Cinema Trailer (1993)

24 June 1993

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.