After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Editing
Hand-painted frames cut at seizure-inducing speed
Direction
Brakhage's vision: cinema as visual music, not storytelling
Director
Stan Brakhage
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Brakhage literally glued moths to film strips and projected them. This is tame for him.
The Academy Film Archive preserved this in 2012—part of a larger reclamation of American avant-garde cinema that mainstream audiences actively avoided for decades.
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