Birth name
     Robert Sanders
Date of birth
     14 January 1933, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Date of death
     9 March 2003, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Mini biography

Stan Brakhage _{(January 14, 1933 - March 9, 2003)}

James Stanley Brakhage (January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American experimental filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.

Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large and diverse body of work, exploring a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Interested in mythology and inspired by music, poetry and visual phenomena, Brakhage sought to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence. His films are for the most part silent.

Brakhage's films are often noted for their expressiveness and lyricism. While they were for many years obscure and hard to find, many are now archived and readily available on modern home media.

“There are a lot of movies made for nobody.”

Brakhage wrote a number of books about films, including Metaphors on Vision (1963), A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book (1971), Film Biographies (1977, Turtle Island Books) and the posthumously published Telling Time: Essays of a Visionary Filmmaker (2003). Transcripts of his talks at the Chicago Art Institute were edited and published as Film at Wit's End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers, (Kingston, New York, McPherson & Co., 1989).

Brakhage's archival material, including correspondence, manuscripts, and audio recordings, are held by the University of Colorado as part of the collection of the Brakhage Center. Brakhage's films, including original elements and prints, are held by the Academy Film Archive in the Stan Brakhage Collection. The Academy Film Archive has preserved and restored many Brakhage films and continues to do so. Films preserved include Window Water Baby Moving, The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, Anticipation of the Night and Interim.

Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ uses Brakhage's painted film style to depict the death of Jesus on the cross. Scorsese has framed samples of Brakhage's films on his office wall.

The concluding credits to The Jacket (2005) are an homage to Brakhage's 1963 film Mothlight.

Director - Selected filmography

1. The Dante Quartet (1987, Avant-Garde, Short, Animation)
   
2. The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (1971, Short, Avant-Garde)