Entertainment

Stan Brakhage Filmography

Name: Stan Brakhage Filmography
Creator: TMDB

Complete filmography of Stan Brakhage: 94 films in the TMDB catalog, sorted by year.

94 rows7 columns1 views0 downloadsSource: TMDBUpdated: 2/21/2026

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94 of 94 rows

Title↕	Year↕	Genres↕	TMDB Rating↕	Votes↕	Language↕	Overview↕
Chinese Series	2,003	N/A	5.1	30	English	Stan Brakhage's final film, made shortly before his death by wetting a filmstrip with saliva and using his fingernail to scratch marks into the emulsion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.
Seasons...	2,002	N/A	6.5	14	English	Brakhage's frame-by-frame hand carvings and etchings directly into the film emulsion, sometimes photographically combined with paint, are illuminated by Solomon's optical printing; this footage was then edited by Solomon into a four part 'seasonal cycle'. This film can be considered to be part of a larger, 'umbrella' work by Brakhage entitled «...» . Seasons... is inspired by the colors and textures found in the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the playful sense of forms dancing in space from the film works of Robert Breer and Len Lye.
Lovesong	2,001	N/A	5.2	32	English	This lush, sensuous film is based on paintings of unusual variety and intricacy. Brakhage's desire to include all the complexities of living in his work is evident in this "love song."
Water for Maya	2,000	N/A	4.6	10	English	Water for Maya is a hand-painted work which came into being during a film interview with Martina Kudlacek about Maya Deren. There was a sudden recognition of Maya’s intrinsic love of water and thus of all Mayan liquidity in magic conjunction, reflection, etc. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
The Dark Tower	1,999	N/A	5.7	36	English	This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with streaks of light and vibrantly colored forms. There appears, frame center, the tapered shape of a tower-- An imposing silhouette against the backdrop of the flaring sky.
Persian Series #1	1,999	N/A	5.2	23	English	This hand-painted and elaborately step-printed work begins with a flourish of reds and yellows and purples in palpable fruit-like shapes interspersed by darkness, then becomes lit lightning-like by sharp multiply-colored twigs-of shape, all resolving into shapes of decay. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Persian Series #3	1,999	N/A	5.5	22	English	Dark, fast-paced symmetry in mixed weave of tones moving from oranges & yellows to blue-greens, then retreating (dissolves of zooming away) to both rounded and soft-edged shapes shot with black. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Persian Series #2	1,999	N/A	5.7	22	English	Multiple thrusts and then retractions of oranges, reds, blues, and the flickering, almost black, textural dissolves suggesting an amalgam approaching script. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
"..." Reel 5	1,998	N/A	5.5	17	English	Reel #5 of (...) is composed of scratch-imagery edited to music by James Tenney. The music starts accompanied only by black leader: then there is a sudden flare of pure white which begins to flicker with negative-colored ephemeral shapes, until finally the music and a fulsome mass of scratched images are accompanying each other. At times a distinctly different quality of colored image appears and continues for awhile (non-orange negative photography of painted film as well as picture images).
Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind	1,997	N/A	5.9	14	English	This film, a combination of hand-painting and photography, is a fulsome exposition of the themes of DOG STAR MAN. In that early epic I had envisioned The World Tree as dead, fit only for firewood; and at end of DOG STAR MAN I had chopped it up amidst a flurry of stars (finally Cassiopia's Chair): now, these many years later, I am compelled to comprehend YGGDRASILL as rooted in the complex electrical synapses of thought process, to sense it being alive today as when nordic legendry hatched it. I share this compulsion with Andrei Tarkovsky, whose last film The Sacrifice struggles to revive The World Tree narratively, whereas I simply present (one might almost say "document") a moving graph approximate to my thought process, whereby The Tree roots itself as the stars we, reflectively, are.
The Cat of the Worm's Green Realm	1,997	N/A	4.6	13	English	Flares of color break into streams of light, leaves, wood grain and prism-etched vegetation. A moon lifts out of this dark weave to be replaced by autumn leaves against a grainy sky, a fiery sky. A gray cat licks itself. A black cat sits quickly down on a green lawn. A "night" of showering dark, a "dawn" of pinks and yellows of plant growth in close-up. A gentle yellow "high noon" prevails into which the orange worm appears and reappears, twisting, arching, turning. A phosphorescent orange of leaves explodes midst greens and black holes appropriate to the image of the worm. The forms of many varieties of leafage mix with a veritable rain or clash of overall tones, a fire of forms, a glowing color photo-negative of worm, and the final canopies of autumn tone and sky tone permeated by sun, sun streaks and octagonal prism shapes ad infinitum.
Comingled Containers	1,996	N/A	6.3	44	English	Comingled Containers is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage. "This 'return to photography' (after several years of only painting film) was made on the eve of cancer surgery - a kind of 'last testament,' if you will… an envisionment of the fleeting complexity of worldly phenomenon."
I Take These Truths	1,995	N/A	5.2	12	English	This film is entirely hand-painted and is composed of such an evolution of variably colored shapes that their inter-action with each other should constitute a purely visual "self-evident" (as prompted by the title). Each frame is printed twice, so that its effective speed (at 24fps) is 12 frames per second. A variety of organic and crystalline painted shapes (painted on clear leader, thus as if brilliantly back-lit in a blazing space of light) are interspersed with very dark (black leader) passages as if etched with scratches of light and stained radiances. There are also some straight, multi-colored, bars which move, diagonally from one side of the film frame to the other. All these "themes" finally give way to clear thick gelatinous effects which resolve themselves in a long passage of hieroglyphic white shapes in a black field, ending on a brief spate of variable coloration.
Prelude 1	1,995	N/A	5.3	10	English	Turquoise and maroon-toned thin lines of paint are interspersed with variously toned circular "watermarks" of blotched paint giving-way to multi-colored brush strokes and finally fulsomely darkened and thickened brush-strokes which then thin to something akin to the beginning.
Black Ice	1,994	Animation	6	53	English	Inspired by a bad fall on a patch of black ice (that ultimately resulted in Brakhage's need for eye surgery), the filmmaker gives us something of a dreamlike descent through the fear and refractions of closed-eye vision regarding such an event.
From: First Hymn to the Night – Novalis	1,994	N/A	5	24	English	“This is a hand-painted film whose emotionally referential shapes and colors are interwoven with words (in English) from the first Hymn to the Night by the late 18th century mystic poet Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg, whose pen name was Novalis. The pieces of text which I've used are as follows: ‘the universally gladdening light … As inmost soul … it is breathed by stars … by stone … by suckling plant … multiform beast … and by (you). I turn aside to Holy Night … I seek to blend with ashes. Night opens in us … infinite eyes … blessed love.’” -SB
The Mammals of Victoria	1,994	Documentary	5	15	English	The film begins with a series of horizontally running ocean tide waves, sometimes with mountains in the background, hand-painted patterns, sometimes step-printed hand-painting, abstractions composed of distorted (jammed) TV shapes in shades of blue with occasional red, refractions of light within the camera lens, sometimes mixed with reflections of water. Increasingly closer images of water, and of light reflected off water, as well as of bursts of fire, intersperse the long shots, the seascapes and all the other interwoven imagery. Eventually a distant volleyball arcs across the sky: this is closely followed by, and interspersed with, silhouettes of a young man and woman in the sea, which leads to some extremely out-of-focus images from a front car window, an opening between soft-focus trees, a clearing. Carved wooden teeth suddenly sweep across the frame. Then the film ends on some soft-focus horizon lines, foregrounded by ocean.
Chartres Series	1,994	N/A	4.7	12	English	A year and a half ago the filmmaker Nick Dorsky, hearing I was going to France, insisted I must see the Chartres Cathedral. I, who had studied picture books of its great stained-glass windows, sculpture and architecture for years, having also read Henry Adams' great book three times, willingly complied and had an experience of several hours (in the discreet company of French filmmaker Jean-Michele Bouhours) which surely transformed my aesthetics more than any other single experience. Then Marilyn's sister died; and I, who could not attend the funeral, sat down alone and began painting on film one day, this death in mind ... Chartres in mind. Eight months later the painting was completed on four little films which comprise a suite in homage to Chartres and dedicated to Wendy Jull.
Stellar	1,993	Animation	6.4	59	English	This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.
Study in Color and Black and White	1,993	N/A	4.8	28	English	A hand-painted and photographically step-printed film, which exhibits variably shaped small areas of color (in a dark field) that explode into full frames of textured color interwoven with white scratch patterns that create a sense of interior depth and three-dimensional movement.
Boulder Blues and Pearls and...	1,993	N/A	5.5	14	English	Peripheral envisionment of daily life as the mind has it - i.e., a terrifying ecstasy of (hand-painted) synapting nerve ends back-firing from thought's grip of life.
Untitled (For Marilyn)	1,992	N/A	5.8	26	English	The film is officially untitled, but is referred to by the dedication that appears in place of a title card. It is dedicated to Marilyn Brakhage, the filmmaker's wife. Out of all the 350+ films that Stan Brakhage made, this was his personal favorite.
Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse	1,991	Documentary	5.2	29	English	Four superimposed rolls of hand-painted and bi-packed television negative imagery are edited so as to approximate the hypnagogic process whereby the optic nerves resist grotesque infusions of luminescent light.
Crack Glass Eulogy	1,991	N/A	5.5	24	English	A nostalgic envisionment of city living - the potential shards of memory seen as if always on the verge of cutting the mind to pieces.
Glaze of Cathexis	1,990	N/A	5.3	42	XX	This hand-painted work is easily the most minutely detailed ever given to me to do, for it traces (as best I'm able) the hypnagogic after-effect of psychological cathexis as designed by Freud in his first (and unfinished) book on the subject - "Toward a Scientific Psychology." (SB)
Visions in Meditation #3: Plato's Cave	1,990	Documentary	5.7	16	English	Brakhage begins here with Carlsbad Caverns as a stand-in for Plato's Cave and then responds to the philosopher's notion of inaccessible ideal forms by seeking out imagery that evokes worlds we cannot see.
Visions in Meditation #4: D.H. Lawrence	1,990	N/A	5.1	15	English	Photographing near Taos, New Mexico, where D.H. Lawrence lived, and in the room in which his ashes may be entombed, Brakhage also cites a statement of the writer's in connection with the film: "There must be mutation swifter than iridescence, haste, not rest, come-and-go, not fixity, inconclusiveness, immediacy, the quality of life itself, without denouement or close."
Visions in Meditation #1	1,989	N/A	4.7	17	English	This is a film inspired by Gertrude Stein's "Stanzas In Meditation", in which the filmmaker has edited a meditative series of images of landscapes and human symbolism "indicative of that field-of-consciousness within which humanity survives thoughtfully." It is a film "as in a dream," this first film in a proposed series of such being composed of images shot in the New England states and Eastern Canada. It begins with an antique photograph of a baby and ends with a child loose on the landscape, interweaving images of Niagara Falls with a variety of New England and Eastern Canadian scenes, antique photographs, windows, old farms and cityscapes, as it moves from deep winter, through glare ice, to thaw.
Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde	1,989	N/A	5.3	16	English	Visiting the famous Anasazi cliff dwellings in Colorado, abandoned about 1275, Brakhage thought, "There is terror here." And so he returns again and again to those empty stone homes.
Rage Net	1,988	Animation	5.2	48	English	Another of Brakhage’s works of “moving visual thinking,” Rage Net reminds one of the vibrant pioneering experiments of European animators of the 1920s.
I... Dreaming	1,988	N/A	5.6	34	English	Phrases of Stephen Foster, set to music by Joel Heartling, are set to film in this autobiographical piece: a solitary female voice, occasionally joined by a chorus, sings phrases of sorrow as we watch a solitary man in shadows in an unadorned house: he stretches out, he picks his feet, he walks across a room, he rocks in a chair. Occasionally he watches two young children at play; the film sometimes speeds up. Handwritten words, like "dark void" and "waiting longing," cross the screen. Film and phrases often come in short bursts. Outdoor it looks gray and cold.
The Dante Quartet	1,987	Animation	6.3	56	English	A visual representation, in four parts, of one man's internalization of "The Divine Comedy." Hell is a series of multicolored brush strokes against a white background; the speed of the changing images varies. "Hell Spit Flexion," or springing out of Hell, is on smaller film stock, taking the center of the frame. Montages of color move rapidly with a star and the edge of a lighted moon briefly visible. Purgation is back to full frame; blurs of color occasionally slow down then freeze. From time to time, an image, such as a window or a face, is distinguishable for a moment. In "existence is song," colors swirl then flash in and out of view. Behind the vivid colors are momentary glimpses of volcanic activity.
Kindering	1,987	N/A	5.1	34	English	Refracted images, not unlike those in a funhouse mirror, display two children playing in a backyard, a boy and a girl. There's a dog, a swing, a picket fence, a Big Wheels trike. The grass is green and lush. A soundtrack mixes a chorus, swelling strings, and a child vocalizing. The effect is to idealize the images.
Night Music	1,986	Animation	5.4	55	English	Part of Three Hand-Painted Films, Night Music (originally painted on IMAX) attempts to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in meditation on sorrow.
The Garden of Earthly Delights	1,981	Animation	6	41	English	A collage of two-dimensional images of vegetation, each appearing only for a moment, sometimes as a single image, more often with other bits of stem, leaf, bud, or petal. Often we see only the outline of objects against a black background. Black and green are occasionally joined by fragments of orange or of white and blue. The objects in the frame don't move but they are quickly replaced by another collage, giving the feel of rapid motion. Each collage is crisp, its lines etched against the background of black and later of white. Whitman anyone, or Hieronymus Bosch? Although there is no soundtrack, the rapidity of changing images and colors suggests a riot.
Unconscious London Strata	1,981	N/A	5.1	17	English	This film, photographed in London, is an exploration into the depths of unconscious reactions.
RR	1,981	N/A	7.2	16	English	This film is a mix of landscape images seen from train windows and the patterned shapes and shifting tones of moving-visual-thought thus prompted; it was inspired by Robert Breer's FUJI.
Arabic Numeral Series 12	1,981	N/A	4.8	16	English	This is the twelfth film in the twenty-part Arabics series. Brakhage creates blurry visual fields that are profoundly without ground, worlds of unidentifiable, ever-shifting shapes, and oceans of light and darkness.
Murder Psalm	1,980	N/A	6.1	18	English	Inspired in part by a dream he had of murdering his mother, Brakhage here gives us one of his profoundest meditations on human aggression.
Duplicity III	1,980	N/A	5.2	14	XX	The final Duplicity film does seem at resolve with the term. All previous visual manifestations have been extended to their limits, through four-roll superimpositions. Obvious costumes and masks. Drama as an ultimate bid for truth, and totemic recognition of human and animal life-on-earth dominate all the evasions a duplicity otherwise affords.
Burial Path	1,978	N/A	5	20	English	The film begins with the image of a dead bird. The mind moves to forget, as well as to remember: this film graphs the process of forgetfulness against all oddities of remembered bird-shape.
The Domain of the Moment	1,977	N/A	5.6	15	English	Four films in contemplation upon those events which are so centered upon one moment that chronology seems almost obliterated or at least unimportant in remembrance.
Desert	1,976	N/A	5.1	18	English	Says Fred Camper of the film: "Invited to Riverside, California, Brakhage, under the mistaken impression that it was a desert, was planning a desert movie when he arrived to discover an unattractive suburban landscape. So he decided to make, and shoot, a desert on his motel room table".
The Text of Light	1,974	Documentary	5.9	23	English	Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures, shot entirely through a glass ashtray. "'All that is is light.' – Dun Scotus Erigena. 'To see the world in a grain of sand.' – William Blake. These are the primary impulses while working on this film. It is dedicated to Jim Davis who showed me the first spark of refracted film light." - S.B.
The Stars Are Beautiful	1,974	Documentary	5	22	English	We move back and forth between scenes of a family at home and thoughts about the stars and creation. Children hold chickens while an adult clips their wings; we see a forest; a narrator talks about stars and light and eternity. A dog joins the hens and the family, while the narrator explains the heavens. We see a bee up close. The narrator suggests metaphors for heavenly bodies. Scenes fade into a black screen or dim purple; close-ups of family life may be blurry. The words about the heavens, such as "The stars are a flock of hummingbirds," contrast with images and sounds of real children.
Star Garden	1,974	N/A	5.7	18	English	The "star", as it is singular, is the sun; and it is metaphored, at the beginning of this film, by the projector anyone uses to show forth. Then the imaginary sun begins its course throughout whatever darkened room this film is seen within. At "high noon" (of the narrative) it can be imagined as if in back of the screen, and then to shift its imagined light-source gradually back thru aftertones and imaginings of the "stars" of the film till it achieves a one-to-one relationship with the moon again. This "sun" of the mind's eye of every viewer does not necessarily correspond with the off-screen "pictured sun" of the film; but anyone who plays this game of illumination will surely see the film in its most completely conscious light.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes	1,972	Documentary	6.3	59	English	At a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned. "S. Brakhage, entering, WITH HIS CAMERA, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without our knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes. It is a room full of appalling particular intimacies, the last ditch of individuation. Here our vague nightmare of mortality acquires the names and faces of OTHERS. This last is a process that requires a WITNESS; and what 'idea' may finally have inserted itself into the sensible world we can still scarcely guess, for the CAMERA would seem the perfect Eidetic Witness, staring with perfect compassion where we can scarcely bear to glance." – Hollis Frampton
The Wold-Shadow	1,972	N/A	5.3	39	English	A stand of birches. Sunlight brightens and dims, revealing more or less of the woods. A little grass is on the forest floor. Is there a shape in the shadows? Something green is out of focus. The light flashes, and the screen goes dark from time to time. We look up close at the bark of trees. Is the god of the forest to be seen?
The Process	1,972	N/A	4.6	20	English	This film by Stan Brakhage investigates the process of memory and thought by melting a series of images and a field of color. The positive-negative flickering graphs a sort of shutter-window all over the matter of the vision. Jittery flocks of space are interweaving as pieces of language in a scant illumination, whereas the process of thought is sheared in fuzzy transience.
The Riddle of Lumen	1,972	N/A	5.5	11	English	“The Riddle of Lumen” presents an evenly paced sequence of images, which seem to follow an elusive logic. As in “Zorns Lemma” the viewer is called upon to recognize or invent a principle of association linking each shot with its predecessor. However, here the connection is nonverbal. A similarity, or an antithesis, of color, shape, saturation, movement, composition, or depth links one shot to another. A telling negative moment occurs in the film when we see a child studying a didactic reader in which simply represented objects are coupled with their monosyllabic names in alphabetical order. –P. Adams Sitney. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Deus Ex	1,971	N/A	5.1	10	English	I have been many times very ill in hospitals; and I drew on all that experience while making DEUX EX.
The Machine of Eden	1,970	N/A	5.4	19	English	"'Mis-takes' give birth to 'shape' (which, in this work, is 'matter,' subject and otherwise) amidst a weave of thought: ... the 'dream' of Eden will speak for itself." The second part of the of The Weir-Falcon Saga trilogy.
Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One	1,968	N/A	4.6	17	English	A visualization of the inner world of foetal beginnings, the infant, the baby, the child - a shattering of the "myths of childhood" through revelation of the extremes of violent terror and overwhelming joy of that world darkened to most adults by their sentimental remembering of it ... a "tone poem" for the eye - very inspired by the music of Oliver Messiaen.
Lovemaking	1,968	N/A	3.8	13	English	A film about the naturalness of sexuality. Its four sequences feature heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking, dogs copulating, and naked childen at play.
Eye Myth	1,967	Animation	5.4	64	English	After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
23rd Psalm Branch: Part I	1,967	N/A	6.2	14	English	In this haunting but lyrical meditation on war, Brakhage intercuts 8-mm footage of Colorado with imagery from WWII newsreels. He responds to the violence and nightmare of war by painting directly on the filmstrip.
23rd Psalm Branch: Part II	1,967	N/A	5.6	12	English	The second part: Brakhage’s layering of images spends less time with images of war, and begins filtering in scenes of Vienna and his home in Colorado. He sets up a comparison between “Kubelka’s Vienna” and his own.
Pasht	1,966	N/A	3.5	13	English	In honor of the cat, so named, and the goddess of all cats which she was named after. - CAT Film Festival
Dog Star Man	1,965	Fantasy	6.5	43	English	Experimental film following a cycle of seasons as well as the stretch of a single day as a man and his dog slowly ascend a mountain.
Two: Creeley/McClure	1,965	N/A	4.9	18	English	Two portraits in relation to each other, the first of Robert Creeley, the second of Michael McClure. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Fire of Waters	1,965	N/A	4.5	14	English	Black atmosphere, with depth-enhancing points of light, broken into shades of dim silhouettes by the ephemeral cloud-glow of lightning.
Song 14	1,965	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONG 14: Molds, paints and crystals (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 13	1,965	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONG 13: A travel song of scenes and horizontals (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 12	1,965	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONG 12: Verticals and shadows caught in glass traps (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 11	1,965	N/A	3.9	12	English	SONG 11: Fires, windows, an insect, a lyre of rain scratches (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 9	1,965	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONG 9: Wedding source and substance (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 10	1,965	N/A	3.9	11	English	SONG 10: Sitting around (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Dog Star Man: Part II	1,964	Drama	6.5	42	English	A man, accompanied by a dog, struggles through snow on a mountain side. We see film stock blister; drawn square shapes appear. Then, we see an infant's face. The images of struggling climber, baby, blurred film stock, large snow flakes, and what may be microscopic details of matter are superimposed on each other, one dominating the frame briefly to be replaced by another. As the man falls in the snow and tries to regain his feet, the baby continues to appear, first with eyes closed. Alternately, images rush by - montages of paper cutouts and life under a microscope.
Dog Star Man: Part III	1,964	Drama	6.1	41	English	Sexual intimacy. Three kinds of images race past, superimposed on each other sometimes: two bodies, a man and a woman's, close up, nude - patches of skin, wisps of hair, glimpses of a face and genitalia; strips of celluloid with lines and squiggles scratched on them; and, close-up shots of what appear to be the insides of living bodies - a heart beating, muscle and sinew and tissue wet with fluids. The exterior and interior of desire.
Dog Star Man: Part IV	1,964	Drama	6.1	40	English	A man is supine on a mountain side. Images rush past of nature and a stained glass saint. An infant is born. We see a lactating nipple. Images include a mountain peak, farm buildings, a tree stump, a fire, a crawling baby, and the sun. The man falls and rolls. Then, later, he swings his ax.
Song 1	1,964	N/A	4.4	15	English	SONG 1: Portrait of a lady (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 8	1,964	N/A	4.4	13	English	SONG 8: Sea Creatures. The Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1963 to 1969.
Song 7	1,964	N/A	4.3	12	English	SONG 7: San Francisco (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 6	1,964	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONG 6: The painted veil via moth-death (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 5	1,964	Documentary	4.2	12	English	SONG 5: A childbirth song (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 4	1,964	N/A	4.5	12	English	SONG 4: Three girls playing with a ball. Hand painted (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 3	1,964	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONGS 2 & 3: Fire and a mind’s movement in remembering (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Song 2	1,964	N/A	4.2	12	English	SONGS 2 & 3: Fire and a mind’s movement in remembering (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).
Mothlight	1,963	Animation	5.7	96	English	Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.
Dog Star Man: Part I	1,963	N/A	6.2	48	English	From a murky landscape, a wooded mountain emerges. We watch the sun. We see a bearded man climbing up the mountain through the snow. He carries an ax, and he's accompanied by a dog. His labors continue. There is no soundtrack. Images rush past - water, trees, and surfaces too close up to distinguish. He struggles. A fire burns. Nature, in long shots and magnified, is formidable and silent. It's tough going; he carries on. In a capillary, blood flows.
Prelude: Dog Star Man	1,962	Drama, Fantasy	6.1	50	English	A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.
Blue Moses	1,962	N/A	4.9	18	English	One of the few Brakhage films featuring spoken dialogue and a central character, this sly and bitter polemic pits an actor (poet? director?) against an unseen audience. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Thigh Line Lyre Triangular	1,961	Documentary	5.2	20	English	Only at a crisis do I see both the scene as I've been trained to see it ( that is, with Renaissance perspective, three-dimensional logic–colors as we've been trained to call a color a color, as so forth) and patterns that move straight out from the inside of the mind through the optic nerves... spots before my eyes, so to speak... and it's very intensive, disturbing, but joyful experience. I've seen that every time a child was born... Now none of that was in WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING; and I wanted a childbirth film which expressed all of my seeing at such a time.
The Dead	1,960	N/A	4.7	24	English	"The Dead became my first work in which things that might very easily be taken as symbols were so photographed as to destroy all their symbolic potential. The action of making The Dead kept me alive." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2013.
Window Water Baby Moving	1,959	Documentary	6.8	72	English	On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Cat's Cradle	1,959	Animation	5.8	37	English	Images of two women, two men, and a gray cat form a montage of rapid bits of movement. A woman is in a bedroom, another wears an apron: they work with their hands, occasionally looking up. A man enters a room, a woman smiles. He sits, another man sits and smokes. The cat stretches. There are close-ups of each. The light is dim; a filter accentuates red. A bare foot stands on a satin sheet. A woman disrobes. She pets the cat. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2006.
Wedlock House: An Intercourse	1,959	Romance	5.4	26	English	We see a film negative of a nude couple embracing in bed. Then, back in regular black and white images, we see them alone and together, clothed, at home. It's night, she sees his reflection in the window, she closes the drapes. After sex, again in a black and white negative, they sit, smoke, have coffee. They kiss, she smiles. They light candles. The images are often quick, the camera angles occasionally are off kilter; the room is sometimes dark and sometimes lit, as if lit by the rotating of a searchlight. The images again appear in negative when they return to bed.
Sirius Remembered	1,959	N/A	3.9	19	English	A tribute to Stan Brakhage's pet dog Sirius, whose decompostion was recorded over 6 months after he had died. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2010.
Anticipation of the Night	1,958	Documentary	6.4	30	English	First person view of a man, seen only in shadow, attempting to connect with the world around him. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Centuries of June	1,955	Documentary	4	22	English	Centuries of June, perhaps more than any Cornell film, is a naked attempt to capture the soul of a place and the mood of a disappearing moment.
Reflections on Black	1,955	Drama	5	17	English	A series of terrifying dramas of male-female relationships offset against the background of a New York tenement. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2012.
Desistfilm	1,954	Drama	5.5	39	English	Four young men and a young woman sit in boredom. She smokes while one strums a lute, one looks at a magazine, and two fiddle with string. The door opens and in comes a young man, cigarette between his lips, a swagger on his face. The young woman laughs. As the four young men continue disconnected activities, the other two become a couple. When the four realize something has changed, first they stare at the couple who have kissed and now are dancing slowly. The four run from the house in a kind of frenzy and return to stare. The power of sex has unnerved them.
The Way to Shadow Garden	1,954	Horror	5.3	15	English	This way madness - or experimental filmmaking - lies. A solitary man in coat and tie enters an apartment. It's midnight. He appears agitated and distraught. He throws a glass of water in his face and laughs. He takes off the coat and tie. His moods swing. He stares at a light bulb. He removes his shirt. He lights a cigarette. He looks at a book. He does something drastic and self-destructive. He opens doors to a garden.
Interim	1,952	Drama, Romance	6	10	English	A young man meets a young woman under a bridge by a railroad. They shelter from the rain and exchange a kiss. The man grows sullen and leaves. The film starts with him and ends with her. It’s a straightforward anecdote told in traditional ways, the likes of which he’d forsake forever; that is, it uses actors, a soundtrack with music and post-dubbed sound effects, a photographer who frames everything professionally and a coherent edited narrative.

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