Tortured Dust Part lll

“One aspect of the film’s ambition is perhaps to extend the metaphor of film-as-music from the familiar brief lyric…into the equivalent of a feature-length movie, or saga, the subject of which is a family maturing and dividing.” – A.L. Rees, British Film Institute While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, “Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.” Coming upon the following passage in her book, he found renewed energy to continue and complete the work: “Why should she give birth, though she had worked in a pottery, to an urn, to a stone angel, to the face of a cracked sundial? Why should she be, she screamed, this common clay, this tortured dust?” From “Miss MacIntosh, My Darling” by Marguerite Young… to whom this film is gratefully dedicated.