Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage was a leading figure of American avant-garde cinema, creating over 300 works between 1952 and his death in 2003. From his early black and white psychodramas, he quickly evolved to the creation of a lyrical first-person cinema in which the images on-screen are those seen by the protagonist behind the camera and include all forms of visual experience, from sights seen or remembered, to dreams, hypnagogic visions and optical effects, as well as what Brakhage came to refer to as “moving visual thinking” — that electrical activity of mind at the biological ground of all image formation. His works encompass a wide variety of subject matter, forms and techniques, variously employing a hand-held camera, rapid editing, plastic cutting and multiple layers of superimposition, in addition to frequent scratching, painting or collaging directly onto the surface of the film. Deeply influenced by a lifetime study of poetry, painting and music, Brakhage made mostly silent films in which he developed the complex rhythms of his own “visual music.” He passed away on March 9, 2003 in Victoria, British Columbia.