Reflecting Thought: Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage is a film maker whose work is shown mainly at film festivals. His work has been likened to poetry. Brakhage explains his techniques and his motivation.

Dream of Jellyfish

FUCK TV

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

Memories of boobs flasher

A boobs flasher tells us, a boobs flasher lets us see.

Hedgehog in Love

Experimental cartoon which unites various techniques: puppets, sand & water (ebru) animations. About friendship, love and necessity to pay attention not only to the visual appeal.

In Spite of Wishing and Wanting

A dynamic, contemporary dance performance about how it is impossible to explain your deepest wishes or desires... how these can only be expressed in dreams and sleep. In the final sequence, we see the importance of effort and hope in the dancers' attempt to escape gravity. The all-male company performs to the music of David Byrne.

Things many have eyes seen

A flickering diary of time, memory, and erosion, «Things Many Eyes Have Seen» unfolds over a month on an island. Hand-processed in salty seawater, its 16mm images dissolve and transform. The landscape flashes by in broken frames of light and shadow, as if the world itself was stuttering between memory and motion. A meditation on seeing and being seen, the film lingers like a fading dream, where observer and landscape blur into one.

The Raspberry Reich

Gudrun has modeled her amateur German terrorist group after the 1970s Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang). She attempts to imitate her heroes by kidnapping the son of a wealthy industrialist and hopes to negotiate leftist demands from the father. When Gudrun’s not spouting leftist verses (including during a hilariously brilliant fuck session), she’s trying to convince her all-male gang to abandon their heterosexuality, which she believes is the result of mass delusion.

Arte é o Futebol Sem Bola

A 5-minute video where three of the most iconic soccer goals—by Maradona, Pelé, and Romário—are shown without the ball.

A Little Love

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

Persona non grata

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Occurrences of Questionable Significance

When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office vixen Fiona struggles with her banana phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short film pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. This work uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.

Begotten

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

Dogville

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

Medea

After escaping from her homeland and now abandoned by the man she loves, Medea must find strength from within to fight against growing injustice - how far is she willing to go?

Afloat

'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.

Scenes from an Island

Hand-edited Lomokino 35mm footage captures scenes from an island, blending shifting textures with guitars and watery drones. A visual and sonic meditation on place and transience.

Wide Open

After awakening in her basement, the protagonist finds herself cursed by an object, rendering her unable to blink. Haunted by a sinister silhouette creature that appears from various locations, she realizes her only chance of defeating it lies in mastering the ability to confront the creature without averting her gaze.

Deshilando Luz

A film essay that intertwines the director's gaze with that of her late mother. Beyond exploring mourning and absence as exclusively painful experiences, the film pays tribute to her mother through memories embodied by places and objects that evidence the traces of her existence. The filmmaker asks herself: What does she owe her mother for who she is and how she films? To what extent does her film belong to her?