6.7

Stellar 1993

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1993

Working completely outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of В“birth, sex, death, and the search for God,В” he has turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy.

6.6

Dog Star Man: Part I 1962

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Jane Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1962

From a murky landscape, a wooded mountain emerges. We watch the sun. We see a bearded man climbing up the mountain through the snow. He carries an ax, and he's accompanied by a dog. His labors continue. There is no soundtrack. Images rush past - water, trees, and surfaces too close up to distinguish. He struggles. A fire burns. Nature, in long shots and magnified, is formidable and silent. It's tough going; he carries on. In a capillary, blood flows.

6.8

Dog Star Man: Part II 1963

Genres: Drama, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1963

A man, accompanied by a dog, struggles through snow on a mountain side. We see film stock blister; drawn square shapes appear. Then, we see an infant's face. The images of struggling climber, baby, blurred film stock, large snow flakes, and what may be microscopic details of matter are superimposed on each other, one dominating the frame briefly to be replaced by another. As the man falls in the snow and tries to regain his feet, the baby continues to appear, first with eyes closed. Alternately, images rush by - montages of paper cutouts and life under a microscope.

6.8

Dog Star Man: Part III 1964

Genres: Drama, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Jane Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1964

Sexual intimacy. Three kinds of images race past, superimposed on each other sometimes: two bodies, a man and a woman's, close up, nude - patches of skin, wisps of hair, glimpses of a face and genitalia; strips of celluloid with lines and squiggles scratched on them; and, close-up shots of what appear to be the insides of living bodies - a heart beating, muscle and sinew and tissue wet with fluids. The exterior and interior of desire.

6.8

Dog Star Man: Part IV 1964

Genres: Drama, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Jane Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1964

A man is supine on a mountain side. Images rush past of nature and a stained glass saint. An infant is born. We see a lactating nipple. Images include a mountain peak, farm buildings, a tree stump, a fire, a crawling baby, and the sun. The man falls and rolls. Then, later, he swings his ax.

6.9

Prelude: Dog Star Man 1962

Genres: Drama, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Jane Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1962

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time.

6.8

Black Ice (1994) 1994

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: DivX, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1994

A lateral descent through the midnight blues and blacks of ice and the refracted colors from absorbed oils.

6

Desistfilm 1954

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Yvonne Fair, A. Austin, Robert Benson, Larry Jordan, Walter Newcomb, James Tenney

Available Quality: DivX, iPod

Year: 1954

Four young men and a young woman sit in boredom. She smokes while one strums a lute, one looks at a magazine, and two fiddle with string. The door opens and in comes a young man, cigarette between his lips, a swagger on his face. The young woman laughs. As the four young men continue disconnected activities, the other two become a couple. When the four realize something has changed, first they stare at the couple who have kissed and now are dancing slowly. The four run from the house in a kind of frenzy and return to stare. The power of sex has unnerved them.

5.6

The Dead 1960

Genres: Short

Country: USA, France

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Kenneth Anger

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def

Year: 1960

"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry...

7.1

The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes 1971

Genres: Documentary, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1971

Forensic pathologists perform autopsies. The first two consist of examination, measurement, and checking muscles. The remaining ones involve cutting away bone to expose and examine internal organs, peeling back skin and muscle, removing organs, using syringes to extract bodily fluids, and cutting pieces of tissue. Clothes are inventoried. As each autopsy ends, bodies are covered with sheets. There is no soundtrack. We see a body with extensive burns. The hands and trunks of the pathologists appear; sometimes we see them holding the microphone of a tape recorder. The work is sometimes delicate, sometimes not; it's often bloody. We are form and...

6.9

23rd Psalm Branch: Part I 1967

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1967

It is a film of extraordinary violence. An unconventional war film that shows the roots of conflict (footage of Hitler, FDR,et al) and the end result (Holocaust victims), while totally avoiding the typical action-film depiction. The super-impositions (etched emulsion, short ends,leader, etc) dissolve into - even obliterate - the archival footage.

6.3

23rd Psalm Branch: Part II 1978

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1978

It is a film of extraordinary violence. An unconventional war film that shows the roots of conflict (footage of Hitler, FDR,et al) and the end result (Holocaust victims), while totally avoiding the typical action-film depiction. The super-impositions (etched emulsion, short ends,leader, etc) dissolve into - even obliterate - the archival footage.

6

The Stars Are Beautiful 1974

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Bearthm Brakhage, Crystal Brakhage, Jane Brakhage, Myrrena Brakhage, Neowyn Brakhage, Rarc Brakhage

Available Quality: Hi Def, iPod, Hi Def, Hi Def

Year: 1974

We move back and forth between scenes of a family at home and thoughts about the stars and creation. Children hold chickens while an adult clips their wings; we see a forest; a narrator talks about stars and light and eternity. A dog joins the hens and the family, while the narrator explains the heavens. We see a bee up close. The narrator suggests metaphors for heavenly bodies. Scenes fade into a black screen or dim purple; close-ups of family life may be blurry. The words about the heavens, such as "The stars are a flock of hummingbirds," contrast with images and sounds of real children.

6.8

Eye Myth 1967

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: DivX, iPod

Year: 1967

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth?

7.6

Window Water Baby Moving 1962

Genres: Documentary, Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Jane Brakhage, Myrrena Brakhage

Available Quality: DivX, iPod

Year: 1962

6.3

Rage Net 1988

Genres: Short

Country: USA

Directors: Stan Brakhage

Actors: Unknown

Available Quality: DivX, iPod

Year: 1988

A short barrage of painted light.