New center preserves work of CU filmmaker Stan Brakhage, aims to be a hub for other experimental media
Stan Brakhage loved poetry and befriended poets but considered himself a failed poet. Many experts disagreed. He was, they said, a consummate poet鈥攐ne who spoke in the language of film and measured his meter in frames.
Stan Brakhage, a longtime faculty member at the University of Colorado
Brakhage鈥檚 friends, colleagues, admirers and former students say the center and its collection is only the beginning of an effort to preserve the work of many听avant garde听filmmakers.
In 2004, about a year after Brakhage had died of cancer at age 70, a New York Times film critic put it this way: 鈥淗is films, which are mostly without dialogue, text or words of any kind, are more often compared to poetry than are other, presumably nearer forms of visual expression.鈥�
With the recent establishment of the Brakhage Center for Media Studies, the works of the poet will be preserved in the history and for the future of cinema. Brakhage鈥檚 work, it is said, has influenced mainstream filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone, and has even been reflected in television commercials, cartoons and MTV videos.
Daniel Boord, CU professor of film studies and director of the Brakhage Center, characterizes Brakhage鈥檚 work as a 鈥渞adical departure鈥� in film. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more like poetry, and it鈥檚 more like music than the visual arts.鈥�
Don Yannacito, a senior instructor of film studies who knew and worked with Brakhage beginning in the 1960s, concurs. Brakhage was influenced by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, early modernist poet Ezra Pound and others.
Boord joined the CU faculty a year after Brakhage鈥檚 death and resolved to honor him. 鈥淚 wanted to take stock in his accomplishments and to build on that legacy by calling attention to this form of filmmaking through a symposium.鈥�
Stan Brakhage (left) with poet Allen Ginsberg.
The symposium was an extension of a regular salon hosted by Brakhage. In the 鈥�70s and 鈥�80s, Brakhage would show films at his home or other location. He wouldn鈥檛 discuss or explain the films himself, but he would invite his guest to engage in thoughtful critiques.
Though many filmgoers might have never heard of Brakhage, they probably have seen the influence of his work, which was groundbreaking and not immediately embraced.
In the early 1960s, though, his work gained notice and acclaim. Brakhage and his first wife moved to a cabin in Lump Gulch, Colo., just south of Rollinsville, and in 1964 he completed 鈥淒og Star Man,鈥� later included in the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, a distinction bestowed on films of particular importance.
By 1967, Brakhage was still eking out a living but was among several 鈥渦nderground鈥� filmmakers profiled in Time magazine. Time said the 鈥渉usky hypochondriac鈥� had 鈥渞adically rewritten movie grammar.鈥�
Brakhage used disparate images and neither narrative nor conventional plot lines. He scratched, colored and wrote on the film itself. He even pasted physical objects perhaps most famously in 1963鈥檚 鈥淢othlight,鈥� which included the wings of moths and other insects, along with leaves and other matter.
鈥淚magine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception,鈥� Brakhage wrote in 1963.
As The New York Times wrote on the occasion of Brakhage鈥檚 death, 鈥淭he idea that the physical act of seeing could be separated鈥攍iberated even鈥攆rom the shape and nature of the things seen, and from our preconceptions about them, was the basis of much of Mr. Brakhage鈥檚 art.鈥�
What the Times did not note, however, was that Brakhage himself shunned dissections of his art and did not try to 鈥渢each鈥� creativity.
鈥淗e steadfastly refused to teach filmmaking itself,鈥� recalls Bill Spencer, a former student of Brakhage鈥檚 who serves on the board of directors of the William H. Donner Foundation and who helped convince that group to purchase Brakhage鈥檚 work, which was being stored by the Museum of Modern Art, and to help establish CU鈥檚 Brakhage Center.
鈥淗e taught for us, but he never taught filmmaking,鈥� Yannacito says. 鈥淔or him, the muse was part of his aesthetic and his mind.鈥�
Brakhage filming from inside a police car.
One reason, Yannacito says, is that Brakhage did not seek imitators. 鈥淗e wanted people to be true to themselves.鈥�
While Brakhage eschewed artistic imitation, he remains the subject of much study.
Bruce Montgomery, faculty director of the archives at the CU Libraries and chief curator of the Brakhage Center, emphasized that the collection of Brakhage鈥檚 work in the archives is both important in itself and a foundation for a larger collection of experimental media by other artists.
With the longtime support of the Donner Foundation, the Brakhage collection was completed in 2007. Already, that collection is the most heavily used in the archives, by about a factor of four, Montgomery notes.
Like Montgomery, Spencer notes that the Brakhage Center ultimately aims to preserve significant portions of the genre. In many people鈥檚 minds, film is the pre-eminent art of the 20th听century, Spencer says.
Preserving it is self-evidently important, Spencer adds. He likens failing to preserve such works of art to 鈥渓etting something like a Picasso just decay in somebody鈥檚 attic.鈥�
As Spencer says, the Brakhage Center aims to advance the preservation, research, education and exhibition in experimental media arts. 鈥淲hile it鈥檚 not a center about Stan Brakhage, it certainly springs from Brakhage and will go on to many other things.鈥�
As the Times wrote in 2005, 鈥渉e left behind an enormous and varied body of work, much of which seems to belong less to the history of cinema than to its future.鈥� With help, CU keeps one eye on yesterday and another on tomorrow.
A selection of films strips that were painted and manipulated by Brakhage.
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