Stan
Brakhage
Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were created without using a camera at all, as he pioneered the art of making images directly on film, by drawing, painting, and scratching.
Born Robert Sanders in Kansas City, Missouri on January 14, , Brakhage was adopted and renamed three weeks after his birth by Ludwig and Clara Brakhage.
As a child, Brakhage was featured on radio as a boy soprano and sang in church choirs and as a soloist at other events. He was raised in Denver, Colorado, where he attended high school with the filmmaker Larry Jordan and the musicians Morton Subotnick and James Tenney. Together, Brakhage, Jordan, Tenney and Subotnick formed a drama group called the Gadflies.
Brakhage briefly attended Dartmouth College on a scholarship before dropping out to make films. He completed his first film, Interim, at the age of 19; the music for the film was composed by his school f
Brakhage Biography Project collection
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Scope and Contents
Interviews in the Brakhage Biography Project touch on the life and work of avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage from the perspective of Brakhage's early friends and collaborators in the Denver area; film critics and fellow experimental filmmakers who rose to prominence in the ss; and Stan Brakhage's first wife, Jane Wodening.
Series 1 contains interviews conducted by David E. James, including audio recordings, transcripts, correspondence with interviewees, and some historical documents submitted by interview subjects. Series 2 contains similar material related to interviews conducted for the project by others. Some interviews in this series may have been collected from other sources not affiliated with the project.
Series 3 contains recordings and transcripts of twelve interviews conducted by David E. James with Jane Wodening over Zoom, from January to April She discusses her own upbringing and creative pursuits, her life with Brakhage from to , raising their five children, and appearing as subjects in many of Brakhage's films.
Series 4 contains news
Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage (January 14, – March 9, ) was an non-narrative filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century. He worked with various kinds of celluloid: 16mm, 8mm, 35mm, and IMAX, and was a practitioner of what he referred to as 'pure cinema'.
Biography Brakhage was born as Robert Sanders in an orphanage in . Three weeks after his birth, he was adopted by Ludwig and Clara Brakhage and given the name James Stanley Brakhage.
As a child, he appeared on radio as a boy soprano before going to high school in and then dropping out of Dartmouth College after several months to make films. He was influenced by the writings of Sergei Eisenstein and the films of Jean Cocteau as well as the Italian neorealism movement. His first film, Interim (), was in the neo-realist style and had music by James Tenney.
In , Brakhage moved to San Francisco where he associated with poets such as and Kenneth Rexroth. In late , he moved to New York City where he met a number of contemporary artists, including Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Joseph Cornell, and John Cage.
Brakhage's films are usually silent and lack a story, being more a
Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage ()
Brakhage Center for the Media Arts
Stan Brakhage was integral to the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at CU Boulder, helping to shape and nurture the program for more than twenty years through the films he made and the wide range of innovative courses he taught. He began teaching here in , and retired as Distinguished Professor a few months before his death. He regularly held salons on art and filmmaking, first at his home and later at the University, and these events had an inestimable influence on all who attended. Although Brakhage expressed skepticism about teaching art making, saying that true art was not teachable, he was in fact an enthusiastic and highly accomplished teacher, and his lectures and salons provided instrumental guidance for a generation of film artists. Brakhage’s courses included Painting and Film, Biographical Film, Avant-Garde Cinema, Documentary Film, and Transcendental Film. A vital source of inspiration to his students and colleagues, his legacy remains central to the vision of the program.
In celebration of Stan Brakhage, the campus holds a screening of his films on the first Sunday of every mont
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