Experimental Film Great Stan Brakhage Interviewed in 1973

 

This is a fascinating 1973 television interview of the great American experimental filmmaker, Stan Brakhage. He made a fantastic career utilizing mostly the technique of painting, scratching, and inking directly on the surface of the celluloid. His films are mysterious, mesmerizing and absolutely gorgeous. They are also profound works of art. Here, Brakhage talks to documentary filmmaker Robert Gardner about his filmmaking philosophy and techniques. Several of his films are shown as he makes comments about them. This is essential viewing if you are interested in experimental film.

Dream Work: A Film by Peter Tscherkassky

Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky works with found footage to create layered films that disturb our casual acceptance of those seemingly everyday tasks performed in cinematic stories. The simple act of walking into a room and drawing the shades can become a hallucinatory experience containing dread. The few films of his that I have seen create suspense from the ordinary. Sounds are repeated and magnified. Shots jitter and jump, repeating in a staccato nervousness that suggests confusion, hysteria, horror.

Dream Work makes the connection between filmmaking and the unconscious obvious. It explodes scenes from a Hollywood movie to reveal the hidden dream forces contained by cinema itself. The rush of fluidly changing points of view reaches a crescendo and breaks down into sprocketed film strips and hands editing celluloid to make palpable the dream content of all films. Working with the material of dreams is what Tscherkassky seems to be doing.

Visit the filmmaker's web site.