Stan Brakhage

Born 1933 in Kansas, USA, died 2003 in Victoria, Canada.

In a fifty-year career of unparalleled productivity, Stan Brakhage revolutionized the field of avant-garde film. Shunning the traditional use of film as a narrative medium, he made hundreds of movies that are akin to abstract paintings that move like musical compositions. His 1964 magnum opus, Dog Star Man, is listed on National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as one of the most important films ever made.

He made his first film, Interim, in 1952. After a short enrolement at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the aquaitance of poets Robert Duncan and Kenneth Rexroth, Brakhage moved to New York City in 1954 and gravitated to the flourishing avant-garde art scene there, being involved with experimental filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Joseph Cornell and Marie Menken. In the late 1950s he returned to his home in Colorado, where he lived and worked most of his life.

Brakhages pioneering film techniques of the 1960s, including scratching on film, painting and gluing objects onto blank frames, rapid editing, swirling camera work and deliberately out-of-focus images, put him at the forefront of the experimental film movement.

His body of work comprises more than 350 films.

In distribution:

An Avant-garde Home Movie, 1961 (archive copy)

Prelude: Dog Star Man, 1961 (archive copy)

Mothlight, 1967

Scenes from under Childhood, 1970 (archive copy)

Eye Myth Educational, 1972

Sincerity, 1973-78 (archive copy)

Birds, 1978

Murder Psalm, 1981