Stan Brakhage: DOG STAR MAN - PRELUDE

The act of seeing with one´s own eyes. 9 minutes from the beginning of one of the most beautiful films ever made, Stan Brakhage´s Dog Star Man. (Be patient - the images only start to flow after one minute black.)
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This clip should have been in HQ. But since Youtube has done away with that option, please use the following link to at least get the slightly better mp4 version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTGdGgQtZic&fmt=18
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And get the Criterion Brakhage Anthology.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Stan Brakhage
• dog star man
• flicker
• avant garde
• stream
• trance

[Schimmerlois]

Forgot to tell you: The complete Dog Star Man can now be found on Veehd. Decent Divx quality, you should still try to catch it in a theatre or at least seek out the Criterion DVD.

[stranislao]

ma tutte le parti di Dog Star Man sono mute,senza musica,senza niente????

[Schimmerlois]

@stranislao  si, senza everything. Only the sound of the projector behind you...

[dragmio]

"One of the most beautiful films ever made"? Brakhage himself said he would edit out from his films anything that had any resemblance of aesthetic appeal, that is of being "beautiful". He was an orthodox "contemporary artist" bowing before John Cage's nonsense that "the art begins where the beauty ends".

I'm sure Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart and the others would agree too. Yeah, right...

[Schimmerlois]

"said he would edit out from his films anything that had any resemblance of aesthetic appeal," - he didn´t quite succeed in that respect, right? And I wouldn´t give a toss about his "art" had he succeeded. Thankfully, film in its brighter moments (as can be seen here) is more than just art, certainly more than "orthodox" laboratory art.

[previewfilms]

It really get's interesting around the 3min mark when Larry finds out Samantha is having an affair with Darren...

[gokinsmen]

Dude, it's not about metaphors, symbolism, or storylines. That's the mistake people make -- they think he's trying to make snooty "high brow" art. He's not. His art is primal, not intellectual and certainly not narrative. In other words, Brakhage isn't making "movies," he's creating a purely sensory experience that stimulates and invigorates your brain.

Think of it as an acid trip without any of the nasty side effects of drug addiction.

[bone8352]

@gokinsmen too bad acid isnt addictive but i think your right about him

[rchbill35]

@plobone try Cory Achangel

[ZenOkeanos]

@gokinsmen

Correct. Except that the artist himself totally helped to promote this basic mistake even to the point of wanting people to believe every hand-painted frame had some personal metaphorical significance symbolizing his thought process. Terrified by the word "abstract". Imagine this kind of verbiage for every painting ever painted.

[chongkina]

You could say that filmmakers like Brakhage and Warhol were testing the limits of cinema the way other artists were testing the limits of sculpture and painting and music and so on. The problem is that in when you deliberately disorient the viewer and deprive them of context in a theatrical film, it makes it very hard for people to connect at all, let alone sustain attention. I'm a professional film critic and I've never seen "Dog Star Man" all the way through because it's like torture to me.

[Nachtpfauenauge665]

@aswanksta thank you very much for the reference i will look in to it

[mravantgarde123]

stan brakhage and his work has really influenced me a lot

he is great

[aswanksta]

@Nachtpfauenauge665 I can see how this art can be daunting as it is so far from what you expect to see even in objective terms...I would suggest reading gene youngblood's book "Expanded Cinema". There is a free pdf download on the net if you google it...that's a good place to start, but just don't expect to ever watch films like this with a mindset similar to watching traditional cinema...

[Nachtpfauenauge665]

to be honest it doesn't stimulate or impress me at all, but i have to admit i'm not really educated in the reception of abstract films... i never got what it's all about and where the difference between art and random images can be defined. i love surreal movies but i can not cope with this kind of movies. maybe someone could teach me how to approach this kind of art? why is it so established?

[bernafett]

is this the whole thing? i thought it was about 15 mins long