From: Myron Ort (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Feb 18 2010 - 11:19:39 PST
yes.
Myron Ort
On Feb 18, 2010, at 10:58 AM, David Tetzlaff wrote:
> Marilyn:
>
> Thanks you for taking the time to rely. My opinions are just my
> opinions, and any shock or outrage I express when others do not
> share them is more theater than anything.
> I obviously mis-spoke in referring to Brakhage's 'larger aesthetic
> project,' as if he had only one. I must also admit that I am not a
> Brahage devotee in any general and broad sense. So, chunks of the
> Brakhage project(s) don't interest me much if at all. As a former
> academic who still thinks a lot like a professor, I do think that
> some aspects of Brakhage's work have more significance from a film
> theory/history standpoint than others. It's not a question of
> whether one film is better than another, or whether one is more
> important in terms of understanding Brakhage as Brakhage, but of
> it's importance to the development of film art and our ideas about
> film art in general. And, I would argue (and I do not think I'm
> alone) that the ideas in 'Metaphors' and the corresponding
> stylistic leap in 'Anticipation' are the most significant
> contributions Brakhage made to the way people think about and
> practice filmmaking. And, no, I don't think you need to see
> everything he did before that to get that transition, just a couple
> key texts (which can be compared and contrasted with other
> contemporary experimental pieces), nor do you need to follow
> Brakhage's evolution any farther to complete the thought. Could
> other works substitute from Anticipation as exemplars of
> 'hypnogogic' cinema? I suppose, but not, I think as well. There's
> something about screening a Brakhage film that has it's roots in
> what Sitney called 'psychodrama', something like Shadow Garden or
> Reflections in Black, something still partaking in familiar modes
> of representation that doesn't look all that different from Deren,
> Anger etc., and then, bam, here's Anticipation and it's just so
> totally different. I may be wrong, but it also strikes me as to the
> film that focuses most purely on the question of seeing the world
> poetically. Later works still take up the question of vision very
> powerfully, obviously, but in more specific ways relating to
> specific content or themes. Again, in terms of trying to grab that
> particular big thing Brakhage did, the purity of Anticipation seems
> especially valuable. The camera eye wanders over a range of sights,
> and is ultimately overwhelmed by the act of truly seeing anything
> and everything...
> I hope that's a better explanation of why IMHO Anticipation is so
> particularly important.
>
> And besides, it's just my favorite :-).
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.