Metaphors on Vision 1:
Early Stan Brakhage
Feb. 11

Sunday, Feb. 11
7PM
AFS Theater, 6406 N Interstate 35 Frontage Rd (map)
AFS member & general ticket prices (tickets)

Experimental Response Cinema is thrilled to kick off a three-evening series of works by the legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage, in commemoration of the republication of his seminal 1963 book Metaphors on Vision, a project of Anthology Film Archives and Light Industry.

Without question one of cinema’s most influential and prolific artists, Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) created a monumentally significant and expressive body of work that spanned 50 years and over 350 films.  For five decades, Brakhage worked in a highly distinctive, individualistic vein, mining celluloid cinema and–at least in his hands–its seemingly limitless potential for the articulation of raw subjective experience and pre-linguistic vision.   He explored a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Interested in mythology and inspired by music, poetry, and visual phenomena, Brakhage sought to reveal the universal in the particular, exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence.

Brakhage’s 1963 Metaphors on Vision is widely considered one of the major treatises on cinema and perception. Copies will be available for sale at all screenings.

The three programs will take place over 3 consecutive evenings, at the AFS Cinema (2/11) and GrayDUCK Gallery (2/12) in Austin, and at Spellerberg/Masur Gallery in Lockhart, TX (2/13).

Light Industry’s Thomas Beard will introduce all three programs.

All films will be shown on 16mm film, except Interpolations 1-5, on 35mm film (2/13 screening).

Tonight’s program:

Program 1, copresented by the Austin Film Society, includes some of Brakhage’s earliest and most influential works, which are discussed in the book. It includes Window Water Baby Moving, his loving and impressionistic portrait of his wife giving birth, Mothlight, where the wings of insects area glued to the surface of the film, and two others.

Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Anticipation of the Night (1958)
Mothlight (1963)
The Dead (1960)

See also:

Metaphors on Vision 2: Brakhage in the 70s (Feb. 12)

Metaphors on Vision 3: Menken + Brakhage (Feb. 13)