Barnes & Noble

Bursting perceptual dams and the boundaries of what could be committed to celluloid, the films of the avant-garde titan Stan Brakhage cover virtually every event in human perception from birth to death -- and everything in between. His manipulations of image and light in his 400-some films have served and continue to influence countless artists, mainstream and otherwise. Now the innovator's 26 most fantastic films have been gathered for By Brakhage: An Anthology, titled after the director's famous title card "signature," often scratches made directly onto the film. Compiled shortly before the director's death in 2003, the DVD set is a sublime, mind-blowing, and meditative experience that is indispensable for anyone interested in American experimental cinema. Sampling all phases of Brakhage's career, the innumerable highlights include: Dog Star Man, the wild rite of passage of the solitary artist made manifest through superimpositions, highly personal handheld camerawork, scratching on film and repetition of sequences; Mothlight and The Garden of Earthly Delights, two astonishing camera-less films created by affixing wings, leaves, and various objects directly onto celluloid with Mylar tape; Window Water Baby Moving, a poetic, graphic, revelatory visual diary of the pregnancy of Brakhage's wife Jane; and The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, wherein an autopsy shot by Brakhage in a Pittsburgh morgue opens up a world that is as cosmically graphic as it is infinitely sympathetic. Among the package's modest supplements, which include an interview with the filmmaker, is an essay by film critic and Brakhage aficionado Fred Camper. He describes a jolt of turbulence that occurred during a flight around the time of the filmmaker's death, comparing it to sudden a vacuum of air caused by the passing of a life so grand. Eddy Crouse

Product Details

• UPC: 715515014021
• Source: CRITERION
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: B&W
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English
• Time: 4:03:00
• Sales Rank: 17,459

This set contains DVDs which may be available separately:

• The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes
• Black Ice
• Cat's Cradle
• Commingled Containers
• Crack Glass Eulogy
• The Dante Quartet
• The Dark Tower
• The Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse
• Desistfilm
• Dog Star Man
• Eye Myth
• Untitled (For Marilyn)
• The Garden of Earthly Delights
• I... Dreaming
• Kindering
• Lovesong
• Mothlight
• The Stars Are Beautiful
• Stellar
• Study in Color and Black and White
• Nightmusic
• Rage Net
• Glaze of Cathexis
• Wedlock House: An Intercourse
• Window Water Baby Moving
• The Wold-Shadow
• Brakhage on Brakhage

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