Four films verging on portraiture, converging to make a drama for all seasons, starring: Jane Brakhage as The Dreamer; Bob Benson as The Magnificent Stranger; Omar Beagle as The Snow Plow Man; and Jimmy Ryan Morris as The Poet and as Doc Holliday. (SB)
Filter Films
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This is a series of ten deliberately untitled films, each separated on the reel by several feet of black leader. As I wish also to make them individually identifiable, I’ll provide the following description of beginning and end shots of each: No. 1 begins with blue negative face of child, ends with single centered eye; No. 2 begins with blowing snow, ends with lamp stand and lights of the city; No. 3 begins with landscape/sunset thru mist, ends with window sill; No. 4 begins with green tiled bathroom, ends with golden mirrored image of cameraman; No. 5 begins with back of airplane seat, ends with horizontal streaks of bold light; No. 6 begins with brown light thru quartz crystal, ends with candle wick burning and circled by boiling gold flecks; No. 7 begins with raccoon in rose light, ends with fading face of child; No. 8 begins with white lamp post, green tree leaves, and window, and ends with flashing window light on brown wall of motel room; No. 9 begins with rocks, tree trunk and plants in glow of light, ends with green and gold forest scene; No. 10 begins with flash of scratched “lightning,” ends with moving dot, screen fading out. (SB)
Short Films 1975
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“Airplane show take-offs, landings, mid-air stalls, planes lurching through storms and countless characters yelling over propeller noise. These bits call up every emotion connected with flight: anxiety, longing, escape, destruction, power…It all amounts to fear of flying – just another manipulated sentiment in the context of a regular film, used to set the unconscious on edge without anybody noticing. Here it’s a breathless, liberating free-association.” – Renee Shafransky Spanning 40 years of aviation through feature clips wrenched from their cozy narrative settings, the film switches perspectives relentlessly. Pilots gaze out of windows to static shots of the earth. Air Force captains inspect the sky for enemy death machines. Desert nomads (Hollywood style) look expectantly for the winged messiah.
Airplane Film
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1: SUN 2: not cap: GOLD – used in alchemy 3: the sun-god of the ancient Romans; but then also, as I understand it, a French word for earth, wherefrom we get our “sail”; and then (puns always intended, as I hear them): soul …. This also, then, a tone poem film. (SB)
Sol
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“The Soul Boys” is a primer for a big movie about two very little guys, looking for a place to shake it in the city.
Soul Boys, The
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This film, one of the most perfect it has ever been given to me to make, was inspired by the series of paintings of the same title by Edward Hicks. (SB)
Peaceable Kingdom
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Two short films, the first NOT about purity itself, whatever that might be, but rather an equivalent of the process of searching for purity in the mind … the second film, then, thought’s rebound from that. (SB)
Purity and After
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Hyacinthus was the enemenos (beloved youth) of Apollo. He was accidentally killed while out hunting with the god and from his blood grew the Hyacinth flower. This film was shot in a Jeep park outside of Toronto.
Hyacinthus
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“HER” to me is always Jane, in the first place, but also Hera: “goddess of women and marriage,” naturally enough. Then, too, as it is a hymn of light, and as he/me feels the self that way, it sings of and to itself. (SB)
Hymn to Her
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“A bold attempt, full of visual sensibility, to use living animals, unconscious of their roles, as abstract counters in a tone poem of color and chiaroscuro.” – Parker Tyler
Night Cats
