From: Mason Shefa (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 29 2009 - 21:00:51 PDT
His wife?
On Mar 28, 2009, at 1:38 PM, Fred Camper wrote:
> The recent talk about who is "THE" (or was that "THEE") "Brakhage
> expert" got me thinking. The world actually does not have the
> "Brakhage expert" that the scope and importance of his work
> requires. There is no "Brakhage expert" in the sense that in the
> academic community one can find, for example, Ezra Pound experts,
> or, more recently and sad (for me if not for others) to say, Bob
> Dylan experts and Madonna experts. I post this in the hope of
> interesting a young scholar, or someone else such as a film
> professor who might interest a young scholar, in taking on this
> role. More than one person taking it on would be fine too!
>
> Obviously, the expert has to be devoted, ready to spend a large
> part of her or his career on this. What's needed is someone with a
> deep interest in, love of, and understanding of both world cinema
> and Brakhage's work in particular. But since a large part of this
> project would be a working through of Brakhage's many influences
> and sources, this scholar should have deep involvements with and
> understandings of modern poetry, classical music from Bach to
> Webern to Messiaen, and Western painting. The scholar should be an
> avid reader, and willing and able to travel to various archives to
> track down Brakhage's voluminous writings, lectures, and
> correspondence. The scholar should also be an extremely fine film
> viewer, both open to multiple ways of seeing and capable of very
> careful observation. I envision the results would be both a massive
> critical biography and a shorter, book-length introduction. Several
> threads would be present in both: Brakhage's complicated life
> story, his artistic influences and the way they are reflected in
> his films, and examinations of the films from varied perspectives.
>
> Partly I write this out of regret at never having taken on this
> task myself. (For various reasons, I never felt up to it.)
> Obviously, a scholar who takes this on may have different ideas
> about what's needed; these are just my opinions. I also write out
> of regret at never having done the kind of massive, tape-recorded
> oral history I had thought of when Brakhage and some of his
> associates were still living. But many who knew and worked with him
> are still living, from a few of his high school friends to the
> filmmakers who helped him in the making of his late films. If an
> oral history is not done, the information lost will be disputed at
> great lengths by scholars far into the future -- just as scholars
> today are debating facts lost about arts from earlier centuries.
>
> Brakhage has a particular importance, due not only to the quality
> and scope of his work but to its, and his, vast influence, but
> there are many other filmmakers worthy of study in depth.
> Interested film scholars should, in my view, be devoting as much
> time to such projects, including gathering facts from living people
> in the present, as is now devoted to "theory," or to arguing about
> things that happened in 1897 that we will likely never know about
> for sure. Sadly, though, in the current climate the latter two
> options may be better career moves.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
_____________________
Mason Shefa
email suppressed
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.