Stan Brakhage

Since 1952, and his first film, "Interim," through such landmark efforts as "Anticipation of the Night" (1958), Brakhage has been engaged in an effort to reshape our habits of seeing. In his book, "Metaphors on Vision," he wrote, "Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not repond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception..." Brakhage has made over 200 films, ranging in length from less than a minute to more than four hours. Though the style of his filmmaking has been consistent over four decades--shallow focus, a rich and sensual use of color, rhythmic cutting, little or no soundtrack--Brakhage has dealt with a variety of themes. In "Scenes From Under Childhood" (1967-70) he sought to reconstruct the primal adventure of perception; in "Dog Star Man" (1959-64) he created a visual symphony that compares the ascent of a mountain to our passage into life; in "Window Water Baby Moving" (1959) he produced a unique film on the birth of a child; and in "Mothlight" (1963) and a dozen other films made over the next 20-odd years, he pasted organic materials or painted, inked, or dyed images directly onto film stock, making streams of images without the use of a camera.