Describe Film Making in the 1950s: Stan Brakhage (Article Sample)

Film making in the 1950’s
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`Stan Brakhage
In his book metaphors on vision Stan Brakhage’s describes vision as an artist’s improved capacity to see. He makes a variety of inclusions to this definition in which he encompasses hallucinations, day dreams, visions, night dreams and other perceptions that are only manifest after closing one’s eyelids. According to him there is the tendency to suppress the mind’s eye after infancy. So dominant among children, the mind’s eye becomes forsaken and people instead tend to focus on the physical, optical eye. Brakhage goes on to say that the early man had a better understanding on vision than we currently do, because he was able to objectify the concept of fear and religion through cave paintings. He further credits artists for carrying down the tradition of vision through the ages though he also laments about the inadequacy of visual perception in the present time which has resulted in the scarcity of inspirations that are being converted into cinematic experiences. Instead visual perception has been replaced by a new language that is based on moving picture images.
Brakhage, also expresses his discontent with the term experimental film and says that it used by those with no understanding towards art. He explains that film is a form of aesthetic expression and not an experiment. I conquer with his opinion because though many expressive films of our generation may appear to be experimental, the personal expression in them is not and instead it is the foundations on which any art form is based. In addition, I find Brakhage’s style of visual thinking with paint to be the ultimate expression of perception that is derived from the wells of all visual influence.
Doug Aitken’s interview with Kenneth Anger
Doug’s interview on Kenneth Anger gave me quite a number of insights on the process of making experimental films, one of them being that they are heavily dependent on graphics and they do not really need to have a defined story line. Indeed from their interview Doug applauds Kenneth on his use of atmospheric impressions that basically involved silent movies that had musical accompaniments (Alternative Film and Video, 38). Experimental films were also made in a way that they were short and captivating enough to directly tap into one’s subconscious by creating drama from nothing but surface. Experimental films such as Scorpion Rising again by Kenneth Anger used shiny and reflective surfaces to portray the motor cycle culture in America. The process of making such films was very cost efficient, this is more so evident from the fact that Kenneth points out to Doug that he did not have a crew and instead did everything himself starting from the camerawork to the lighting and even the editing. One of the influence that I found to be interesting was the fact that music videos borrowed heavily from experimental films especially in the non-linear sequences and the jump cuts. I find this interesting because most music videos used a considerably higher budget as compared to the experimental films. In fact at some point Kenneth had contemplated wheth...