This, the second film of the continuing autobiographical “Duplicity” series, is composed of superimpositions much as the mind “dupes” remembered experience into some semblance of, say, composed surety rather than imbalanced accuracy – as thought may even warp “scene” into symmetry, or face into multitudinous mask. What will have been becomes what will be being. I’ve tried to “give the lie” to this genesis of all white-lying. (Stan Brakhage)

An episode, complete in itself, excerpted from “Gravity is Not Sad, But Glad,” this film consists of a series of flipbooks. The contents of the flipbooks offer comments on aspects of history, culture and the nature of seeing.

The “Dynamo theories” of Henry Adams portrayed in first person/sexual vision: an American businessman as lord of all he surveys.

After wishing for years to be given the opportunity of filming some of the more “mystical” occupations of our Times – some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into “bogeyman” … viz: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc.: – I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final several days of September 1970 – this opportunity due largely to the efforts of a Pittsburgh newspaper photographer, Mike Chikaris – who was sympathetic to my film show at the Carnegie Institute and responded to my wish as stated on that occasion – therefore pleaded my “cause” eloquently with Police Inspectors of his acquaintance: my thanks to him, to Sally Dixon of the Carnegie Institute and to the Policemen who created the situation that made this film possible. (Stan Brakhage)

“… almost like the Earth itself – the green ice-covered rocks, the slicing feeling, the compressive feeling of the glaciers. The whole time I was watching I kept thinking that you were a master of the North, the arctic landscape – the dark red flowers in the dusky light, the deep blue light, the tall trees with the running mists, and Jane looking… the ice, the water, the moss, the golden light. A visual symphony…” – Hollis Melton

This is a portrait of the man I choose to call “the greatest I’ve known”: Clancy, whom the fates surnamed Sheehy, personifies for me that which is simply human beyond condition and all conditioning.

A series of narrative events, stories if you like, but so clustered visually as to have a centre, so to speak, slightly off centre.

The film begins with the image of a dead bird. The mind moves to forget, as well as to remember: this film, in the tradition of THOT-FAL’N, graphs the process of forgetfulness against all oddities of remembered bird-shape. The film might best be seen along with “Sirius Remembered” and “The Dead,” as the third part of a trilogy.