Tortured Dust

Evan “Raymond Gun-Virus” Pincus4.0

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paul a.

Exploding Celluloid: Three by Stan BrakhageFriday, July 21st, 7pmfilmmakerscoop.ecwid.com/Exploding-Celluloid-Three-by-Stan-Brakhage-p571416485To all who are reading,Hello! I, along with the impeccably brazy Chris Van Horn, have come together to start a screening series dedicated to exhibiting experimental films that remain un-digitized. Our first screening will be next week at the FMC Screening Room (475 Park Avenue South, 6th Floor), where we will screen three rather remarkable titles by Stan Brakhage. As I said last time, I sincerely hope that every single person who reads this is able to come. Here are some program notes I wrote up for the event in question: "Inspired by Wheeler Winston Dixon’s The Exploding Eye, an essential survey of lesser-known experimental filmmakers from the 1960s, Chris Van Horn and I share a passion for tracking down neglected feature-length and short avant-garde 16mm “films” (and we mean this in the truest sense of the word) that remain un-digitized — ones that usually reside in private collections, public libraries, and mixed-media archives. It’s with our screening series, Exploding Celluloid, that we hope to provide a broader level of accessibility to these types of under-appreciated titles, ones included within The Film-Makers' Cooperative’s vast collection and, hopefully as well, stir up some much-needed renewed interest.For our first screening, we’ve selected three 16mm Stan Brakhage films from the 1980s: the feature-length Tortured Dust (1984), followed by the shorter Nodes (1981) and Matins (1988). Perhaps the most radical decade in the filmmaker’s oeuvre — one that included several notable experiments with sound (Kindering and Loud Visual Noises), narrative structure (the Faustfilm series), and visual legibility (the Egyptian Series and Arabics) — it's an era of his career that Chris and I find fascinating, and also rather underrepresented in the current repertory film community. While much deserved praise has been bestowed upon the hand-painted The Dante Quartet (1987), we've decided to screen the lesser-known Nodes. Likewise, Matins, which was “made on occasions of, and inspired by, Jim and Lauren Tenney's marriage,” was selected for similar reasons.Tortured Dust, the informal final chapter of the autobiographical "Book of the Film" cycle that includes Scenes from Under Childhood (1967–70), Sincerity (1973–80), and Duplicity (1978–80), finds the Brakhage household at its breaking point. Completed only a few years before his divorce from Jane Wodening, the film paints a fraught portrait of an artist so blinded by their own ego that they recognize, all too late, that they’ve lost all that they hold dear to them. Gone is the joyous family camaraderie seen in films such as The Weir-Falcon Saga (1970), replaced now by moody adults and pre-teens who can’t even be bothered to acknowledge their father’s camera. The film’s intensely personal subject matter has kept it from being recognized as one of Brakhage's finer achievements, yet, as Tony Pipolo once eloquently put it in Artforum, 'it is precisely because Tortured Dust exhibits psychological rawness, unchecked narcissism, emotional vulnerability, and displaced eroticism that it remains an invaluable expression of an artist whose intuitive impulses as a filmmaker allowed his work to seize truths that he could not consciously fathom or tolerate.'" Many thanks to the incredibly patient Robert Joseph Schneider and the wonderfully generous Marilyn Brakhage.

Chris Van Horn4.0

“…to be as an art form, film needs to be in the home.” - Stan BrakhageHonored to have programmed this film with the esteemed Paul Attard at Filmmakers Coop this past Friday (with an encore this upcoming Friday, July 28th!) as a part of Exploding Celluloid - a new series where we “excavate” hard to see non-digitized avant garde works like Tortured Dust.That direct quote is cited in Wheeler Winston Dixon’s The Exploding Eye: a Re-visionary History of 1960’s American Experimental Cinema - a book which served as inspiration of this series. WWD refused to pass judgements on any of the underseen works featured in his book but would let filmmakers speak for themselves. Brakhage is of course referring to the practical democratization of the exhibition process in his quote but it feels fitting here too in a film where he’s yearning at something now gone in his household, if it was ever really there at all…A melancholic last look at Brakhage’s first family, the feature presents itself through a series of quick clips that feel like memories fading. And the subject of those memories are Brakhage’s first wife Jane and a brood of mini Brakhages running around, doing their best to simply live their lives in front of the leering lens of their father. Tony Pipolo sort of talks about this in his essential essay revealing crucial biographical details necessary to get the most out of the film but it’s almost as if we see Stan view pieces of himself growing into their own selves (and away from him) in front of our very eyes. And the only shots of Jane almost feel loaded with jealousy or resentment at her close relationships with their kids. Yet it’s not only the camera pointed at them, Stan himself also makes a crucial appearance about halfway, looking at himself in the mirror, sitting back with a self satisfied look…or is it one of critical reflection?Come see it for yourself, and other rare Brakhage - with a program that also features Nodes (1981) and Matins (1988) tomorrow night!16mm print - Filmmaker’s Coop