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Brakhage Short Films

Screening on Film
  • Cat's Cradle

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1959, 16mm, color, silent, 6 min.

This early work presents a lyrical vision of the intersecting lives of two couples and the mediating force of a feline presence.

  • Night Music

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1986, 16mm, color, silent, 1 min.

Originally painted on IMAX-gauge film, this small work attempts (according to its maker) "to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in meditation on sorrow."

  • Rage Net

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1988, 16mm, color, silent, 1 min.

Another of Brakhage’s works of "moving visual thinking," Rage Net harks back to the vibrant pioneering experiments of European animators Oskar Fischinger and Viking Eggeling.

  • Window Water Baby Moving

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1959, 16mm, color, silent, 12 min.

Perhaps the best known of Brakhage’s films, Window Water Baby Moving captures the birth of Jane and Stan Brakhage’s first child in a home-delivery that paralleled the film’s own resolutely independent, homemade form.

  • The Garden of Earthly Delights

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1981, 35mm, color, silent, 3 min.

This cameraless collage work is composed entirely of montane-zone vegetation applied to the filmstrip. It presents a double homage: to Bosch’s celebrated canvas and to the flower paintings of Emil Nolde.

  • Creation

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1979, 16mm, color, silent, 17 min.

One of Brakhage’s most stunning landscape films, Creation is set in a far north wilderness during the transition between the seasons and the surge of life being renewed.

  • Short Film #1

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1975, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min.

The first in a series of untitled short works, this film attempts to visualize Jane Brakhage’s memories through a haunting series of family photographs.

  • Hymn to Her

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1974, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min.

A hymn of light, this lyric portrait focuses on "Her" (a reference to both Jane Brakhage and the goddess Hera) and in the process sings "of and to itself."

  • The Riddle of Lumen

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1972, 16mm, color, silent, 17 min.

Brakhage’s version of a structural film, The Riddle of Lumen is constructed as a series of uncanny object lessons on the nature of light.

  • Blue Moses

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1962, 16mm, black & white, 11 min.

This unique work within Brakhage’s oeuvre features the artist in confrontation with the camera eye as he presents a philosophical investigation of the nature of the medium.

  • Fireloop

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1986, 16mm, color, 3 min.

Originally created as a special-effect element for a stage production, this hand-painted film presents one of Brakhage’s most vivid "closed-eye envisionments"—here, of "a fire in the mind."

  • Loud Visual Noises

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1986, 16mm, color, 3 min.

This vibrant hand-painted film attempted to create a mode of optic feedback generated by the filmmaker’s response to sound.

  • I . . . Dreaming

    Directed by Stan Brakhage.
    US, 1988, 16mm, color, 8 min.

This beautiful film marks a rare use of both music and language to explore aspects of the melancholic and of what Brakhage termed the "senses-of-love as children know."

Part of film series

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Stan Brakhage: In Memoriam

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