pretense is maybe an outward manifestation of creativity in process, though sometimes an end in itself perhaps? Did you ever make a fort with blankets and chairs? Maybe whoever happened to be watching you thought of this as pretense? Maybe you were really living in that place?
@MrMeddled Everything you said is exactly right, except that I'm old, fat and unhip, and that I discovered Brakhage from 16mm and 8mm prints that my friend Eric Sherman owns, not from a book. Other than that, you're right on (lack of artistic integrity and such).
@MrMeddled Just because something reminds you of some stereotype of "art house" or "avant-garde" or something (likely a stereotype it had a part in creating in the first place), doesn't mean it's pretentious.
If you get the chance also to see this with Text of Light (on a cinema screen, with them playing live), it's doubly amazing. Great show, great filmmaker, great musicians.
@MrMeddled "Imagine 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."
@saravlinder the film is interesting as it draws attention to whats in the projector but it is by no means a "good film" like many people claiming it brilliant. anyone that says it is is either stuck up or a hipster. if you want to see a great experimental film that shows life through new perspective watch any film where someone tied a camera to their cat. it accomplishes everything this does with perspective, and is actually entertaining. all this does is play with the medium and thats about it
@masterxak well, I have nothing against hipsters ahah, anyway..dont think stan was a hipi, but an authentic and brilliant craftsman. its a collage with real wings, petals n all.. its not even filmed man. it took him ages to carefully print it. that was a never done before crazy idea. and still one of the best metaphor of the moving image so far, dead as soon as grasped. if u dont agree, I dont f* care. this quality sux but the original is pure music.
if you ever get a chance to see this (or any of brakhages films) projected on a screen in a theatre the way it was intended to be seen do not miss the opportunity. trust me, this guy knew what he was doing.
this is only a dim shadow of the experience. no joke.
Me and my fat friends on minimum wage like to watch BB while drinking cider and smoking mayfairs. We don't really care about it, we just hope somebody will get naked. Then we talk about football for a while then we go for chips at the chicken shop while we worry about the constantly rising price of ikea furniture.
Me and my artsy girlfriend watch this smoking marijuana, drinking ice water w/ lemon, listening to a Syd Barrett record. We don't like it all that much, we pretend to for about 47 seconds and then decide to vacuum the living room instead. Then we open our eyes and stop breathing and eat plums until the morning looks like day again.
u'r right!! I've already answered tons of complains..the horrid media artifact is youtube. but take it as an input. go and try 2 see it on a cinema screen, like a moth to a flame (this is how I've seen it first). mothlight is not just a brilliantly crafted film, but a metaphor of Vision, of Cinema
Brakhage used innovative materials to make images in ways that did not depend on how cameras were typically designed and used by the commercial film industries. This action is not merely artistically innovative; it is a political act that resists "the authority ... of industrial mediation," that is to say, capitalism.
well with a name like professionallynasty you wouldn't expect an insightful comment would you? brakhage did this stuf LONGGGG before anyone had a PC or digital camera or anyone else even thought of doing it. so put it in context. laughing at brakage in the 21st century is like looking at the pioneers from the 1800s and saying 'how come they didn't just drive out west?"
What about people like Norman McLaren? He was doing this sort of experimental stuff before Brakhage, and just look at some of Isidore Isou's stuff: again before Brakhage.
So as for that pioneers comment, no, it's not the same at all. Cars didn't exist in the 1800's, but Brakhage's style of experimental filmmaking was around long before he himself was.
well, all those 'cool' and 'cutting edge' effects you see nowadays on modern video/cinema production like bursts of light, scratched film, cutaways, etc. (and I can mention you hundreds of movies, tv credits, videoclips, etc. that make use of them) have been DIRECTLY influenced by the amazing works of Brakhage.
Don't get me wrong I like his work...but some of the comments here seem a little too contrived, pithy, falsely intellectual and patently high handed for my taste...but whatever.... bon ton roulette!
I think that this doesn't translate well to the internet. The point of a Brakhage film is to watch it as a film. So the soundtrack of the film is the sound of the film running through the projector. So that the light coming through the film is projected onto the screen, flickering as only a projector does. Mothlight is an epic film, important in a multitude of ways, if you ever get a chance screen it in a theater.
yes life doesn't have a meaning. But then again life isn't a carefully crafted construction containing only what a specific individual invisioned. these types of carefully crafted works are called art and usually contain some type of meaning or message. does that make sense?
I think art is a monologue between 2 me.. not a constructed dialogue. guess it's something in between rather than a beginning or and end. but this is my "meaning".. if u don't feel it, nevermind-that's the point. carefully crafted to me doesn't mean efficiently finalized. anyway I'd only suggest u 2 watch it in big screen, just u and stan, if hadnt already.
@NegativeNick if life doesn't have meaning, is that not a meaning in of itself? either way, i don't believe brakhage was a nihilist, nor do i think this piece is about that. i don't think this is about meaning, but about use and forms, a rorschach test if you will.
@truthemulator first of all, NO! second of all, just because it doesn't have a meaning doesn't mean he was a nihilist, that's a no sequitor.
yes you are right, it's not about meaning, it IS about form and style and experience, experience without meaning. more could be said about ML but I feel the most important thing is that it is without meaning
in my last H&A:Animation class we screened Brakhage's "Garden of Earthly Delights"....after it was done we got into a discussion on whether or not it was animation...i guess it depends on one's definition of "animation" and the process which Brakhage took to create the film
if you like this kind of filmmaking theres a new collection of similar stuff by other directors around the same time just released by the national film preservation foundation. but its not everyones cup of tea.........
all of brakhages films, and especially this one, should be seen projected on a screen. even viewing it on a large tv screen on dvd only approximates the experience. this is like looking at a black and white postage stamp of the mona lisa.
ya..but not everybody has a homeprojector or somethin (I dont).... and lookin the mona lisa at louvre with tons of japs is not that ecstatic even.. anyway I've seen it on screen, in one of those crappy small cinemas that resist against all these nowdays hollywoods, pretty cool then..
SORRY! nothin vs japanese! call it irony... I wanted 2 respond 2 majorhoop... unfortunately classics like the mona lisa are just seen but not really perceived. look over! and cinema, that is not just the medium, is a metaphor of vision..as brakhage intended, or?
"Imagine 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."----Stan Brakhage, "Metaphors on Vision"
Wow, cool stuff. I forgot about Stan Brackage. Amnesia? Why? I don't know. Maybe the drugs finally got to me. hah. just kidding. My favorite teacher told me, as a child, to forget everything when I finish learning. I forgot that too until now,
Mothlight is a mimicry of seeing through the eyes of a moth.This film provides dreamlike vision through a psychedelic transmutation of the human eye into the moth eye broadening our collective optical experience. Mothlight is unprecedented or imitated. If anybody can give me a link to anything which is like this but is not by Brakhage? (Black Ice is amazing!)
I've actually seen this on DVD too, in college. I think Mr. Brakhage expressed that the moths were found in one of his light fixtures, and that he "didn't want them to die in vain," so he used them in his film.
what is so incredible about this video, I don't get it, and just to let you know I have nothing against abstract art or film, but this is just a bunch of mothwings on empty celluloid. I don't get it, please enlighten me.
You really need to see it in it's proper version on film, youtube doesn't give it any justice. I watched it on a big screen from a DVD and the quality showed a lot more detail. One of the reasons I appreciate it is because I know how much work and detail has gone into this trying to recreate my own.
pretense is maybe an outward manifestation of creativity in process, though sometimes an end in itself perhaps? Did you ever make a fort with blankets and chairs? Maybe whoever happened to be watching you thought of this as pretense? Maybe you were really living in that place?
juarjum 2 months ago
why the fuck are media students/artists so damn pretentious?
jol034 3 months ago
interesting!, too bad its a hipster magnet nowadays
adonis699 6 months ago
@MrMeddled id better be damn near the front
itsTempleofSound 7 months ago
The anti-intellectual sentiment in here reminds me of the time I drank moonshine with some retarded hillbillies. Good times.
Bapuji42 7 months ago
@MrMeddled Everything you said is exactly right, except that I'm old, fat and unhip, and that I discovered Brakhage from 16mm and 8mm prints that my friend Eric Sherman owns, not from a book. Other than that, you're right on (lack of artistic integrity and such).
Bapuji42 7 months ago
@MrMeddled I think i love you
itsTempleofSound 7 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
If you enjoy this please check out my channel.
kanzelone 8 months ago
@MrMeddled Just because something reminds you of some stereotype of "art house" or "avant-garde" or something (likely a stereotype it had a part in creating in the first place), doesn't mean it's pretentious.
1Moregano1 9 months ago
pretentious hipsters, everywhere.
masterxak 9 months ago
@MrMeddled haha
gracer99 9 months ago
If you get the chance also to see this with Text of Light (on a cinema screen, with them playing live), it's doubly amazing. Great show, great filmmaker, great musicians.
awaymyghosts 9 months ago
@MrMeddled "Imagine 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."
saravlinder 1 year ago 11
@saravlinder the film is interesting as it draws attention to whats in the projector but it is by no means a "good film" like many people claiming it brilliant. anyone that says it is is either stuck up or a hipster. if you want to see a great experimental film that shows life through new perspective watch any film where someone tied a camera to their cat. it accomplishes everything this does with perspective, and is actually entertaining. all this does is play with the medium and thats about it
masterxak 9 months ago
@masterxak well, I have nothing against hipsters ahah, anyway..dont think stan was a hipi, but an authentic and brilliant craftsman. its a collage with real wings, petals n all.. its not even filmed man. it took him ages to carefully print it. that was a never done before crazy idea. and still one of the best metaphor of the moving image so far, dead as soon as grasped. if u dont agree, I dont f* care. this quality sux but the original is pure music.
saravlinder 9 months ago 4
@masterxak there is a new perspective if you tie a camera in a cat but a new perception
pasheko152 8 months ago
@masterxak sorry I wanted to say There is a new perspective if you tie a camera in a cat but NOT a new perception
pasheko152 8 months ago
Not a great rendering, and not the 22 minute version, but it's great that someone put a bit on youtube. Very neat.
soupongrill 1 year ago
@soupongrill it's only four minutes long. you saw a loop.
masterxak 9 months ago
ew youtube
Taoofchao 1 year ago
if you ever get a chance to see this (or any of brakhages films) projected on a screen in a theatre the way it was intended to be seen do not miss the opportunity. trust me, this guy knew what he was doing.
this is only a dim shadow of the experience. no joke.
majorhoop 1 year ago
Jackson Pollock. Wonderful.
gvraymond11 1 year ago
Brakhage's work was a huge influence on me in my teen years in the late 70s.
Synthetrix 1 year ago
why is it pink? it wasn't pink before.
amara2021 1 year ago
Good.
EGI313 1 year ago
Maybe it's just me but isn't this only the beginning of the film?
britishwisejake 2 years ago
I fucked Maya Deren.
plugindave 2 years ago 3
conformist
yonskii 2 years ago
Me and my fat friends on minimum wage like to watch BB while drinking cider and smoking mayfairs. We don't really care about it, we just hope somebody will get naked. Then we talk about football for a while then we go for chips at the chicken shop while we worry about the constantly rising price of ikea furniture.
realaeonzero 2 years ago 26
Me and my friends love to listen to this and watch old 40's. Then Denny comes to us and we smoke coffee while drinking Pall Malls.
EarpVangorden 2 years ago
@EarpVangorden Ur so ARTGZY man
Cocobredmuncher9000 1 year ago
Me and my artsy girlfriend watch this smoking marijuana, drinking ice water w/ lemon, listening to a Syd Barrett record. We don't like it all that much, we pretend to for about 47 seconds and then decide to vacuum the living room instead. Then we open our eyes and stop breathing and eat plums until the morning looks like day again.
TrevvorRiley 2 years ago 3
This is a horrid reproduction of "Mothlight". It's kind of neat as a media artifact, but it's certainly not how Brakhage's work should be seen.
Bapuji42 2 years ago 12
u'r right!! I've already answered tons of complains..the horrid media artifact is youtube. but take it as an input. go and try 2 see it on a cinema screen, like a moth to a flame (this is how I've seen it first). mothlight is not just a brilliantly crafted film, but a metaphor of Vision, of Cinema
saravlinder 2 years ago 10
I;m unsure of how this is a brilliant film. I'm certainly open to new interpretations, but most of Brakhage's work is quite bizarre.
Ares925 2 years ago
this really needs to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate its beauty.
rhymeswithhonda 2 years ago
where'd you get to see this projected?
Orf 2 years ago
Brakhage used innovative materials to make images in ways that did not depend on how cameras were typically designed and used by the commercial film industries. This action is not merely artistically innovative; it is a political act that resists "the authority ... of industrial mediation," that is to say, capitalism.
123andcut 2 years ago
Wow, thats so cerebral and cutting edge...my pants are on fire...I'm going to bludgeon people over the head with my weighty knowledge of film now.
Bye.
professionallynasty 2 years ago 4
well with a name like professionallynasty you wouldn't expect an insightful comment would you? brakhage did this stuf LONGGGG before anyone had a PC or digital camera or anyone else even thought of doing it. so put it in context. laughing at brakage in the 21st century is like looking at the pioneers from the 1800s and saying 'how come they didn't just drive out west?"
misteromeara 2 years ago
What about people like Norman McLaren? He was doing this sort of experimental stuff before Brakhage, and just look at some of Isidore Isou's stuff: again before Brakhage.
So as for that pioneers comment, no, it's not the same at all. Cars didn't exist in the 1800's, but Brakhage's style of experimental filmmaking was around long before he himself was.
21stCenturyPanda 2 years ago
well, all those 'cool' and 'cutting edge' effects you see nowadays on modern video/cinema production like bursts of light, scratched film, cutaways, etc. (and I can mention you hundreds of movies, tv credits, videoclips, etc. that make use of them) have been DIRECTLY influenced by the amazing works of Brakhage.
inyi 2 years ago 2
Who was influenced by...?
Don't get me wrong I like his work...but some of the comments here seem a little too contrived, pithy, falsely intellectual and patently high handed for my taste...but whatever.... bon ton roulette!
That's why I'm not majoring in Film Studies.
:P
professionallynasty 2 years ago
I think that this doesn't translate well to the internet. The point of a Brakhage film is to watch it as a film. So the soundtrack of the film is the sound of the film running through the projector. So that the light coming through the film is projected onto the screen, flickering as only a projector does. Mothlight is an epic film, important in a multitude of ways, if you ever get a chance screen it in a theater.
reallyaxes 2 years ago
Would you agree with me that Moth Light doesn't have a meaning? that it doesn't mean anything?
NegativeNick 2 years ago 2
maybe the point ain't the meaning.
do we understand life? does it have a meaning?
isn'it an unconceivable stream with glimpses of poetry.. a mothlight?
saravlinder 2 years ago
I wish I could use italics to stress words here.
yes life doesn't have a meaning. But then again life isn't a carefully crafted construction containing only what a specific individual invisioned. these types of carefully crafted works are called art and usually contain some type of meaning or message. does that make sense?
NegativeNick 2 years ago
I think art is a monologue between 2 me.. not a constructed dialogue. guess it's something in between rather than a beginning or and end. but this is my "meaning".. if u don't feel it, nevermind-that's the point. carefully crafted to me doesn't mean efficiently finalized. anyway I'd only suggest u 2 watch it in big screen, just u and stan, if hadnt already.
saravlinder 2 years ago
@NegativeNick if life doesn't have meaning, is that not a meaning in of itself? either way, i don't believe brakhage was a nihilist, nor do i think this piece is about that. i don't think this is about meaning, but about use and forms, a rorschach test if you will.
truthemulator 1 year ago
@truthemulator first of all, NO! second of all, just because it doesn't have a meaning doesn't mean he was a nihilist, that's a no sequitor.
yes you are right, it's not about meaning, it IS about form and style and experience, experience without meaning. more could be said about ML but I feel the most important thing is that it is without meaning
NegativeNick 1 year ago
..seriously? epic?
I think Brakhage might scoff at that description
dannyman90 2 years ago
What technique did he use for that one? Painting directly onto the celluloid film?
Mumusthereal 2 years ago
he taped leaves and mtohwings and grass and stuff directly onto 16mm film
FidelioRoo 2 years ago
thats pretty cool. my fave is when the light swells and takes over the screen, i was ready to rubbish it until i saw that.
wunglow 2 years ago
can't wait for the sequel.
mongolianturkey 2 years ago 19
@mongolianturkey You'r in luck. Check out, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' on Criterion's By Brakhage Vol.1.
unrelatedsegments 1 year ago
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!
globeldeth11 2 years ago
amazing!
willberain 2 years ago
has it started it yet... :-p,
RSOP90 2 years ago
in my last H&A:Animation class we screened Brakhage's "Garden of Earthly Delights"....after it was done we got into a discussion on whether or not it was animation...i guess it depends on one's definition of "animation" and the process which Brakhage took to create the film
naseimbuch 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
hey just wondering what the copyright is on this. is it open or do you have permission from the brakhage estate to post it?
love brakhage but worry about his & his family's rights
axe1ator 2 years ago
duh
thasza 2 years ago
I hate you Stan Brakhage!
loneraver2 2 years ago
yay !
koodyta 3 years ago
yay !
koodyta 3 years ago
yay !
koodyta 3 years ago
if you like this kind of filmmaking theres a new collection of similar stuff by other directors around the same time just released by the national film preservation foundation. but its not everyones cup of tea.........
majorhoop 3 years ago
all of brakhages films, and especially this one, should be seen projected on a screen. even viewing it on a large tv screen on dvd only approximates the experience. this is like looking at a black and white postage stamp of the mona lisa.
majorhoop 3 years ago
ya..but not everybody has a homeprojector or somethin (I dont).... and lookin the mona lisa at louvre with tons of japs is not that ecstatic even.. anyway I've seen it on screen, in one of those crappy small cinemas that resist against all these nowdays hollywoods, pretty cool then..
saravlinder 3 years ago
Comment removed
Ureshii2 3 years ago
With tons of 'what' excuse me? What kind of alien casual racism was that?!?!?!
TheVelvetUnderdog 3 years ago
SORRY! nothin vs japanese! call it irony... I wanted 2 respond 2 majorhoop... unfortunately classics like the mona lisa are just seen but not really perceived. look over! and cinema, that is not just the medium, is a metaphor of vision..as brakhage intended, or?
saravlinder 3 years ago
Comment removed
majorhoop 3 years ago
"Imagine 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."----Stan Brakhage, "Metaphors on Vision"
majorhoop 3 years ago
why not have a look at my short 16mm abstract film 'sUMMERTIME eXPERIMENTAL'...
emmaalouise x
emmaalouisesmith 3 years ago
On his account he was the most thorough documentary filmmaker.
BezanDarro 3 years ago
pretty nice, cool cencept
thomasloyens 3 years ago 2
Someones been smoking the jazz fags?
michaelscreen 3 years ago
It's just not the same when it's not projected.
scroogemcdan 3 years ago
Someone had a bit too many mushrooms.
moush 3 years ago
thank you.
orphanedangel 3 years ago
One of my favourite films ever...so few views on here!!!
dipsetmuthafucka 3 years ago
Wow, cool stuff. I forgot about Stan Brackage. Amnesia? Why? I don't know. Maybe the drugs finally got to me. hah. just kidding. My favorite teacher told me, as a child, to forget everything when I finish learning. I forgot that too until now,
deepeeeh 3 years ago
..that's maybe the only thing u should have learned:
never forget 2 forget ever!
yo
saravlinder 3 years ago
Check out Len Lye as well as Norman Mclaren.
mizofan 3 years ago 3
fascinating... check out mcclaren tho
craziehorse 3 years ago
Mothlight is a mimicry of seeing through the eyes of a moth.This film provides dreamlike vision through a psychedelic transmutation of the human eye into the moth eye broadening our collective optical experience. Mothlight is unprecedented or imitated. If anybody can give me a link to anything which is like this but is not by Brakhage? (Black Ice is amazing!)
chipchasm 3 years ago
norman mclaren was certainly an influence on stan...check out his work
roxonogueira 3 years ago
Extraordinary!!!! Wow!
MattieCooper 3 years ago
I've actually seen this on DVD too, in college. I think Mr. Brakhage expressed that the moths were found in one of his light fixtures, and that he "didn't want them to die in vain," so he used them in his film.
MoviManATL 3 years ago
I saw this on DVD at university a few weeks ago and have used his work as inspiration for my major project. He's work is incredible.
wheelymel 3 years ago
what is so incredible about this video, I don't get it, and just to let you know I have nothing against abstract art or film, but this is just a bunch of mothwings on empty celluloid. I don't get it, please enlighten me.
speleman 3 years ago
You really need to see it in it's proper version on film, youtube doesn't give it any justice. I watched it on a big screen from a DVD and the quality showed a lot more detail. One of the reasons I appreciate it is because I know how much work and detail has gone into this trying to recreate my own.
wheelymel 3 years ago
criterion people
yellowwasp09 3 years ago 4
yellowwasp09 - I'm inclined to agree with you
although this gives people a small introduction at any rate -- the opportunity to see what experimental film of those days was like.
ksol1460 3 years ago
woooow! (I whish I was moore clever to find something else to say). Esthethic, delicate, new born, fragile, enlighting...
korovievwoland 3 years ago
I just watched this today in a Cinema Studies lecture. Unusual stuff.
CybernautZero 3 years ago
This is actually about three times as long. It gets a lot better.
donuts187 4 years ago
incredible piece, poor transfer.
deuvaux 4 years ago 2
this was made very interestin. Stan stuck moth wings, leaves ect; on the the film roll to create wat we c
donrMedia 4 years ago
this was made very interestin. Stan stuck moth wings, leaves ect; on the the film roll to create wat we c
donrMedia 4 years ago
I agree...
still one of the best experimental visualpoem I've ever seen
saravlinder 4 years ago
I hate this.
coheedchiodos1028 4 years ago
I do not care...
art rejects unjustified hatred
saravlinder 4 years ago
Ain't made for Youtube
Saturnome 4 years ago
why not?
saravlinder 4 years ago
Because it's made to be shown on film, or at the very least on a good quality dvd, on YouTube it doesn't work great.
Saturnome 4 years ago 2
well, true...but that's youtube..
u can always find it on dvd too
...ve done ;)
saravlinder 4 years ago
fair enough. i got to see it big screen at an art college screening earlier today, so i'm not sure what i have to complain about... :)
deuvaux 4 years ago
spoke to me
pig3292 4 years ago
"Mi dica cosa vede?" "Una cosa che ho visto fare con un bisturi ed un corpo ancora caldo" "Cosa?" "sì, su un pavimento"
LazarusGordon 4 years ago
This is a truly beautiful piece of art.
thepokeduck 4 years ago