Elementary Phrases

USA 1994, 16mm, col, silent, 35:00 min

realized by:

Stan Brakhage, Phil Solomon

available copies:

LUX:

available for rent

Light Cone:

available for rent

synopsis: LUX online catalog 2004

This is a hand-painted and elaborately step-printed collaboration between the film makers STAN BRAKHAGE and Phil Solomon. After many months of working together, step-printing the painted strips of film by Brakhage, Phil Solomon discovered the following passage which helped to clarify the process and inspired the film's editing: 'The profound nature of this concept will be better understood, and the positive study of it more successful, if we think of such an organisation, in its temporal aspect and scope, as corresponding exactly to what is called in music the phrasing; distinguished both from the melody (which is based on the differences of pitch) and from the rhythm (based on the repetition of an arsis-thesis system). Like rhythm it is based on facts of intensity (nuances) even while its form is extended over a dimension analogous to that of melody. Whoever distinctly grasps these ideas will feel the importance of what we must call the phrasing of a picture; and, for example, the stylistic importance of the differences observable between the slow, full, majestic phrasing of a Veronese (that of Tintoretto is more suave with equal plenitude), the rugged phrasing of Caravaggio, powerful in its boldness, brutal, even a bit melodramatic; the essentially polyphonic and architectonic phrasing of N. Poussin; or again, the pathetic and tormented phrasing of Delacroix. It is entirely reasonable to note a likeness with these characteristics in the music of Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, or Berlioz.' - Susan K. Langer (ed.), Reflections on Art; Etienne Souriau, Time in the Plastic Arts.

synopsis: Light Cone 1996

Une collaboration exceptionnelle entre les pellicules peintes à la main par le cinéaste Stan Brakhage et les traitements optiques de Phil Solomon.

REFLECTIONS ON BLACK

1955 16mm n/b opt 12' 150F

Interactions entre le masculin et le féminin dans un bâtiment triste et opprimant de New York, ce film comprend des grattages à la surface de l'émulsion, comme une première métaphore sur la vision de Brakhage.

cinovid / oVid / Werkleitz Gesellschaft and the authors © 1996-2008