MY BRAKHAGE PAGES

These web pages bring together my writing on the films of Stan Brakhage, whose films I first encountered in 1968 and whose work I continue to find bewitching. Why such a difficult film-maker continues to have this effect is one reason for creating this material. By doing so, the picture appears larger than the sum of its parts, but it is far from complete: that will only be possible when the vast majority of these films are in circulation, which is very far from the case at present.

The separate pages are:

• Review of Stan Brakhage Films (1952-2003): catalogue raisonné, edited by Émilie Vergé, published 2016
  
  
• Brakhage event held at Birkbeck A brief account of a day conference on Brakhage held in London on 7 March 2015.
  
  
• Stan B and Mr Turner Touches on SB's admiration for the painter JMW Turner, and also in praise of Mike Leigh's Mr Turner (2014). [length: 3700 words, available as a PDF download, December 2014]
  
  
• Brakhage's 23rd Psalm Branch Interrogated An essay on Brakhage's pacifist film, 23rd Psalm Branch (1967), which I call a problem film. [length: 6000 words, available as a PDF download, 2013]
  
  
• Francis Bacon and Stan Brakhage at the Butcher's A webpage linking Bacon's idea of the 'brutality of fact' with Brakhage's Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971). [length: 820 words, ca 2009]
  
  
• Stan Brakhage and the Melies Way This essay formed chapter 9 of my digital book 'Film Past Film Future' published in 2011. It situates Brakhage's aesthetics among other film-makers from the American underground/avant-garde film. It is particularly aimed at those coming to Brakhage's work for the first time. [length: 7,400 words, available as a PDF download, 2011]