Beautiful Funerals

USA 1996, 16mm, col, silent, 2:25 min

realized by:

Stan Brakhage

notes:

Also credited as 20 min.

available copies:

London Filmmakers Coop:

available for rent

Canyon Cinema Inc.:

available for rent

synopsis: Canyon Cinema online catalog 2004

BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines. Finally there is a brilliant pinkish flare veined with curled blue lines which engenders a resolution between these (above described) alternating modes - colors in the straight-line sections, lines among the artifice of "flowers," a kind of dark lattice-form which knits the two modes, gray and colored "clouds" which correlate them.

(Note: the credit to Sam Bush, Western Cine, is simply an homage to his creative craftsmanship. He is a paid employee of Western Cine, Denver, Colorado, who was hired for this job: he is in no sense a collaborator on this work.)

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