Prelude 9

...again, is "plein-aire abstraction" as defined above (painted in New York City) – with, for example, even a correctly toned green impression of The Statue of Liberty – and, then, impressions of Toronto with its architectural particularities appearing, midst hurrying people – shapes (almost as if photographed at times). This segment is Double-Printed (i. e., two frames for every painted one).

Prelude 13

Singly-printed multi-colored watery "blobs" and "feathery" streaks of painted color, dominated by yellows and reds interweaving in complexity until there's an evolution of hard-edge autumn leaf patterns which dissipate into patterns similar to the beginning of the film.

Prelude 2

Interplay of toned rectangular shapes, vertical and horizontal and diagonal lines in juxtaposition with hardened darker shapes which gradually shift tone and lighten until ending on thin blues.

Chartres Series

A year and a half ago the filmmaker Nick Dorsky, hearing I was going to France, insisted I must see the Chartres Cathedral. I, who had studied picture books of its great stained-glass windows, sculpture and architecture for years, having also read Henry Adams' great book three times, willingly complied and had an experience of several hours (in the discreet company of French filmmaker Jean-Michele Bouhours) which surely transformed my aesthetics more than any other single experience. Then Marilyn's sister died; and I, who could not attend th...

Eyes

“After wishing for years to be given the opportunity of filming some of the more “mystical” occupations of our Times – which the average imagination turns into “bogeyman”… viz: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc. – I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand” - Stan Brakhage. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2011.

I...

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. I..., proposes an unstable image of the self with its centerless collisions of diverse imagery. Small black shapes are superimposed ov...

Persian Series #10

"Twigs" of color in space, and pure white "ghosts" of them in the background interspersed with dark amalgams of these and conglomerate forms. The resolve of these themes is a combination of "amalgams" and "ghosts" at one in interplay, and then dark slashed spaces with "webs" of white, webbed spaces on white and, finally, solarization of colored forms - midst which the frame-line rises from bottom and drifts a few seconds visible, creating an insubstantiality of the frame of these images.

Persian Series #11

Persian Series #11 begins with a "window" of yellow paint adrift in the full frame of multicolored paint-shapes. Alternating black-space/white-space exists as a back-drop for slashes and curves of color - reds and blues shifting to red-blue-green, then yellow, etc. slashed in black.

Persian Series #6

Persian Series #6 begins with what appears to be dried red and yellow rose petals, suddenly shot-thru with blue which causes a shift to violets and greens. This mash of colors thickens and is scored by white and then black, calligraphic lines, which are "echoed" in all previous floral colors whose "dance" seems to turn clock-wise and "explode" into fiery reds.