mdblist.com logo Movie Search


Ratings
Between
and
Between
and
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Between
and
With at least
votes
Additional filters
m
Lists, Streaming Services, Cast and more
Create List (104 items)

Login to create a dynamic list


poster
75
6.8
/28515/
64
/775/
65
/574/
3.5
/22353/
96
/189/
56
/542/
94
/44/
cc age 16+

Mr. Turner (2014)
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
poster
64
41
6.4
/1017/
56
/53/
64
/59/
3.7
/5694/

Stellar (1993)
This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.
poster
61
40
6.4
/1149/
50
/46/
60
/53/
3.6
/3703/

Black Ice (1994)
Inspired by a bad fall on a patch of black ice (that ultimately resulted in Brakhage's need for eye surgery), the filmmaker gives us something of a dreamlike descent through the fear and refractions of closed-eye vision regarding such an event.
poster
71
38
6.8
/1293/
53
/44/
63
/56/
3.9
/5534/
95
/6/

The Dante Quartet (1987)
A visual representation, in four parts, of one man's internalization of "The Divine Comedy." Hell is a series of multicolored brush strokes against a white background; the speed of the changing images varies. "Hell Spit Flexion," or springing out of Hell, is on smaller film stock, taking the center of the frame. Montages of color move rapidly with a star and the edge of a lighted moon briefly visible. Purgation is back to full frame; blurs of color occasionally slow down then freeze. From time to time, an image, such as a window or a face, is distinguishable for a moment. In "existence is song," colors swirl then flash in and out of view. Behind the vivid colors are momentary glimpses of volcanic activity.
poster
58
37
6.0
/998/
50
/38/
54
/55/
3.5
/4808/

Night Music (1986)
Part of Three Hand-Painted Films, Night Music (originally painted on IMAX) attempts to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in meditation on sorrow.
poster
56
35
5.8
/841/
48
/43/
52
/48/
3.4
/2556/

Rage Net (1988)
Another of Brakhage’s works of “moving visual thinking,” Rage Net reminds one of the vibrant pioneering experiments of European animators of the 1920s.
poster
55
34
5.8
/791/
42
/35/
53
/42/
3.5
/2085/

Glaze of Cathexis (1990)
This hand-painted work is easily the most minutely detailed ever given to me to do, for it traces (as best I'm able) the hypnagogic after-effect of psychological cathexis as designed by Freud in his first (and unfinished) book on the subject - "Toward a Scientific Psychology." (SB)
poster
62
32
6.4
/584/
49
/22/
58
/26/
3.9
/1974/

Untitled (For Marilyn) (1992)
The film is officially untitled, but is referred to by the dedication that appears in place of a title card. It is dedicated to Marilyn Brakhage, the filmmaker's wife. Out of all the 350+ films that Stan Brakhage made, this was his personal favorite.
poster
54
32
5.5
/827/
42
/26/
53
/39/
3.3
/1902/

The Wold-Shadow (1972)
A stand of birches. Sunlight brightens and dims, revealing more or less of the woods. A little grass is on the forest floor. Is there a shape in the shadows? Something green is out of focus. The light flashes, and the screen goes dark from time to time. We look up close at the bark of trees. Is the god of the forest to be seen?
poster
56
28
6.0
/705/
40
/28/
52
/29/
3.7
/1322/

Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse (1991)
Four superimposed rolls of hand-painted and bi-packed television negative imagery are edited so as to approximate the hypnagogic process whereby the optic nerves resist grotesque infusions of luminescent light.
poster
58
27
6.2
/592/
46
/23/
52
/32/
3.6
/1262/

Lovesong (2001)
This lush, sensuous film is based on paintings of unusual variety and intricacy. Brakhage's desire to include all the complexities of living in his work is evident in this "love song."
poster
49
23
4.9
/637/
42
/29/
48
/28/
3.0
/1254/

Study in Color and Black and White (1993)
A hand-painted and photographically step-printed film, which exhibits variably shaped small areas of color (in a dark field) that explode into full frames of textured color interwoven with white scratch patterns that create a sense of interior depth and three-dimensional movement.
poster
56
21
5.7
/418/
43
/18/
55
/22/
3.5
/948/

Persian Series #3 (1999)
Dark, fast-paced symmetry in mixed weave of tones moving from oranges & yellows to blue-greens, then retreating (dissolves of zooming away) to both rounded and soft-edged shapes shot with black. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
poster
56
21
5.8
/417/
41
/17/
57
/22/
3.5
/1013/

Persian Series #2 (1999)
Multiple thrusts and then retractions of oranges, reds, blues, and the flickering, almost black, textural dissolves suggesting an amalgam approaching script. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
poster
53
21
5.3
/436/
43
/19/
52
/23/
3.3
/1008/

Persian Series #1 (1999)
This hand-painted and elaborately step-printed work begins with a flourish of reds and yellows and purples in palpable fruit-like shapes interspersed by darkness, then becomes lit lightning-like by sharp multiply-colored twigs-of shape, all resolving into shapes of decay. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
poster
52
18
5.2
/363/
38
/25/
50
/24/
3.4
/787/

From: First Hymn to the Night – Novalis (1994)
“This is a hand-painted film whose emotionally referential shapes and colors are interwoven with words (in English) from the first Hymn to the Night by the late 18th century mystic poet Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg, whose pen name was Novalis. The pieces of text which I've used are as follows: ‘the universally gladdening light … As inmost soul … it is breathed by stars … by stone … by suckling plant … multiform beast … and by (you). I turn aside to Holy Night … I seek to blend with ashes. Night opens in us … infinite eyes … blessed love.’” -SB
poster
52
16
6.1
/287/
32
/10/
46
/10/
3.5
/1149/

Water for Maya (2000)
Water for Maya is a hand-painted work which came into being during a film interview with Martina Kudlacek about Maya Deren. There was a sudden recognition of Maya’s intrinsic love of water and thus of all Mayan liquidity in magic conjunction, reflection, etc. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
poster
52
15
5.7
/248/
36
/16/
46
/13/
3.7
/881/

The Cat of the Worm's Green Realm (1997)
Flares of color break into streams of light, leaves, wood grain and prism-etched vegetation. A moon lifts out of this dark weave to be replaced by autumn leaves against a grainy sky, a fiery sky. A gray cat licks itself. A black cat sits quickly down on a green lawn. A "night" of showering dark, a "dawn" of pinks and yellows of plant growth in close-up. A gentle yellow "high noon" prevails into which the orange worm appears and reappears, twisting, arching, turning. A phosphorescent orange of leaves explodes midst greens and black holes appropriate to the image of the worm. The forms of many varieties of leafage mix with a veritable rain or clash of overall tones, a fire of forms, a glowing color photo-negative of worm, and the final canopies of autumn tone and sky tone permeated by sun, sun streaks and octagonal prism shapes ad infinitum.
poster
73
13
6.9
/130/
77
/18/
70
/2/
3.8
/1014/

Coupling (1999)
A hand-painted work prepared by my imagination of the sex act affecting internal organs of the human bodies.
poster
57
10
6.3
/197/
42
/14/
52
/12/
3.6
/436/

I Take These Truths (1995)
This film is entirely hand-painted and is composed of such an evolution of variably colored shapes that their inter-action with each other should constitute a purely visual "self-evident" (as prompted by the title). Each frame is printed twice, so that its effective speed (at 24fps) is 12 frames per second. A variety of organic and crystalline painted shapes (painted on clear leader, thus as if brilliantly back-lit in a blazing space of light) are interspersed with very dark (black leader) passages as if etched with scratches of light and stained radiances. There are also some straight, multi-colored, bars which move, diagonally from one side of the film frame to the other. All these "themes" finally give way to clear thick gelatinous effects which resolve themselves in a long passage of hieroglyphic white shapes in a black field, ending on a brief spate of variable coloration.
poster
62
9
6.7
/62/
45
/2/
68
/4/
3.5
/653/

Concrescence (1996)
"concrescence, principle of As a term from A.N. Whitehead's metaphysics refers to the drive things possess that impel them to actualization, the creative urge towards concrescence, for producing novel advances through the generation of greater interrelatedness. Many thinkers would deem this urge divine, so the principle of concrescence may be considered one of Whitehead's terms for God." - Bruce Elder
poster
48
7
5.3
/159/
24
/7/
47
/12/
3.5
/242/

Chartres Series (1994)
A year and a half ago the filmmaker Nick Dorsky, hearing I was going to France, insisted I must see the Chartres Cathedral. I, who had studied picture books of its great stained-glass windows, sculpture and architecture for years, having also read Henry Adams' great book three times, willingly complied and had an experience of several hours (in the discreet company of French filmmaker Jean-Michele Bouhours) which surely transformed my aesthetics more than any other single experience. Then Marilyn's sister died; and I, who could not attend the funeral, sat down alone and began painting on film one day, this death in mind ... Chartres in mind. Eight months later the painting was completed on four little films which comprise a suite in homage to Chartres and dedicated to Wendy Jull.
poster
52
7
5.5
/119/
37
/5/
53
/10/
3.3
/300/

Prelude 1 (1995)
Turquoise and maroon-toned thin lines of paint are interspersed with variously toned circular "watermarks" of blotched paint giving-way to multi-colored brush strokes and finally fulsomely darkened and thickened brush-strokes which then thin to something akin to the beginning.
poster
?
7.0
/14/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 24 (1996)
Prelude 24 returns to the tempo of single-frame printing. Its shapes and forms are composed of nearly black torques of ink, flickering with white and only faintly, now and again, tinged with color.
poster
?
7.1
/15/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 22 (1996)
Prelude 22 is a singly-printed hand-painted thick black and gold swatches of color which evolve into forms that are horizontally and vertically sliced, smeared, cut-off until color "runs" sensuously in snake-like shapes, coils, soforth.
poster
?
7.1
/13/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 23 (1996)
Prelude 23 is doubly-printed hand-painted frames causing an effect almost as if wisps of tone were tinting the film intercut with sharp thin lines which "fatten," then, into thick crowded layers of paint, senses of great visual depth.
poster
?
6.3
/15/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 20 (1996)
Prelude 20 begins with pale washes of hand-painted tones overlaid eventually by sharp forms, a kind of sliced color becoming more and more smeared.
poster
?
6.5
/13/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 21 (1996)
Prelude 21 is most characterized by the double-time of single-frame printing of extremely thick swatches of multiple colors as if in a furiously boiling cauldron.
poster
?
7.1
/16/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 19 (1996)
Prelude 19 begins with hand-painted swatches of variable colors encompassed eventually by vertical strokes of reds and blues, followed by sudden clearings which are counterpointed by sections of multiple blobs of color, these effects alternating again and again to then become contrasted with pale washes of color deepening to end on blacks.
poster
?
6.5
/13/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 17 (1996)
Double-printed thinnest possible lines and multiple dots of pale color interwoven with sweeps of linear tones in swiftly transversing motion, all deepening from this almost white field of flitting activity to some solidification of forms.
poster
?
6.9
/13/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 18 (1996)
Singly-printed evolution from a deep blue-blackness of hard-edge twisting and sweeping bars and deep black swirls of dry-cracked and electrically "webbed" blotches, giving way to mixtures of bright blue and deep black sweeps of almost hieroglyphic forms midst swirls of multiple colors played against fleeting blacks evolving into multiple shapes in contrastingly brilliant whites.
poster
?
7.1
/17/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 15 (1996)
Doubly-printed striations of "brush-strokes" through multicolored "rock" forms dissolving then to blackened "mud" eliciting increasing sense of being under earth.
poster
?
6.9
/13/
20
/1/
20
/1/

Prelude 16 (1996)
Singly-printed criss-crosses of molten "brush"-(hard-edge)-strokes of black over pebbled yellow, ending finally on an intermix of all intertwined forms with increasing lightness/whiteness.
poster
?
20
/1/

The Fur of Home (1996)
A hand-painted double-frame printed film which begins with textures reminiscent of a gray shag rug that is fretted by green and golden flashes-of-shape deepening into darker solid purples and even black solidities at brief intervals: this evolves into black hair-like lines which curl and trace circularities midst all earlier textures, forms and colors until, finally, tanned flesh and blood tones predominate. Suddenly a sweep of thin black verticals generate a recapitulation of the beginning which, then, ends on a glob of black.
poster
?
20
/1/

Sexual Saga (1996)
This hand-painted step-printed film begins with "explosions" of white, yellow, orange (deepening into reds), vermillion, and darker red flame shapes. Then there are anatomical beseeming solid yellows against flickering reds. Multiple dissolves of all previous forms and flickering shapes interspersed with blacks and replaced by "dolly in" movements (of the same) interspersed with white, then increasingly with lengthening blacks which finally gives way to a single vermillion/purple burst of flowery form.
poster
?
7.2
/13/
10
/1/
100
/1/

Skein (1974)
'A loosely coiled length of yarn (story) ... wound on a reel' -- my parenthesis! This is a painted film (inspired by unpainted pictures): 'skins' of paint hung in a weave of light.
poster
?
7.5
/12/

Resurrectus Est (2002)
Resurrectus Est is a hand painted film which suggests, from the first, a spread of fragments of plants and flowers, individual petals and bits of twig with multiple colors, with much green "leafiness". This gives way to solid yellows and browns of, or suggesting, dried grass and earth (the decay, as it were, of the above mentioned fragments); but then again, and so spaced with clear light whites as to appear airy, wind-blown, somesuch, miniscule fragments of plant life, gradually enlarging to fill-the-frame. Amidst the many floral and earthen tones, there is a particular ethereal pale, almost phosphorescent, blue which so dominates the scenes of its appearance as to cause the darker earthen yellows to lighten into a mixture with the blue that suggest abstract Easter: these tones finally take over to such an extent that the flower-fragments can no longer be seen clearly as such.
poster
?
7.6
/16/

Ascension (2002)
Ascension begins by superimposing paintings that look like clouds over extremely close views of mottled paint, peculiarly intimate in their three-dimensionality. Juxtaposing images of transcendence with representations of what he liked to call the "mess" of life, Brakhage distances himself from both.
poster
?
6.5
/10/
50
/2/

Occam's Thread (2001)
This is a hand painted, step printed work which views Occam's economical vision of life (The Razor's Edge') as something more thread-like: a staggered black line, growing steadily more solid, albeit often tangled trails vertically across the film surface, insinuating itself (it's life as it were) through a series of various paint shapes, some of which seem as if about to destroy it, bury it in black patches or cut into it: finally the line as if severed in glare of white leader, ending in multicolored paint patch.
poster
?
7.6
/7/
10
/1/

Cannot Not Exist (1994)
In this non-orange negative of a hand-painted film, a series of luminously pastel shapes – often patches of color against a stark white background – are interspersed with nearly black intermittent smudges punctuating white. These visual themes develop gradually into a series of multi-colored vertical lines which weave contrapunctally in relation to the flickering (single-frame) paint shapes. Twice, a solid (as if photographed) shape is seen receding from the amalgam of paint. Masses of tiny dots and "curlicue" shapes sometimes interrupt the thematic progression from irregular paint-shape flickerings to fluidity of vertical lines: this theme eventually resolves itself through the intervention of globular shapes (most notably, brilliant orange-yellow "globs") which spread themselves over several frames and prompt the eventual amalgamation of all themes.
poster
53
?
6.1
/238/
42
/13/
56
/12/

23rd Psalm Branch: Part II (1967)
The second part: Brakhage’s layering of images spends less time with images of war, and begins filtering in scenes of Vienna and his home in Colorado. He sets up a comparison between “Kubelka’s Vienna” and his own.
poster
?
7.3
/12/
20
/1/

Night Mulch (2001)
This film is hand-painted and is essentially about the interplay between hypnagogic vision and words, the effect of the one upon the other, the contest between the two. The hypnagogic (hand-paint) shapes are multiple and variably complex that they tend to suggest a variety of almost recognizable shapes, such as many brightly colored people or a mulch of flowers. The words, such as "Subversive" and "Liberating", along with many which are unreadable, seem to struggle for an equality of viewer comprehension, almost as if the brain were coming to terms again with the origins of written language: the pun "Quills" accentuates this. In all cases, language is subsumed, but leaves a distinctive trail of itself distinct from the painted images.
poster
?
8.4
/7/

Spring Cycle (1995)
This is a hand-painted, step-printed (with a variety of effects) film which begins with rock-like earth-toned shapes in darkness, followed by increasingly lighter pastel-colored mini-boulder forms to the right and left of the frame mimicking a whitish vertical tunneling (giving the illusion the viewer is moving upward, finally). Then there are garishly colored crystals (primarily green and red) seeming to "bloom" (as if minerals were crystallizing into flowers). Suddenly it is as if tubular phosphoressences (mostly purple, blue and green) are undulating in a dark field. Flashes of white and rhythmic blanks of pastel colors punctuate these transformations which soon become plant-like - beseeming stalks of marsh grass under water, interrupted by whirling garish crystal flowers. Several times, in these passages, the film goes to these blanks of pastel tones. Finally the film ends on a series of these blank tones shifting among blues and blue-greens exploding into white.
poster
?
7.1
/21/
20
/1/

Dark Night of The Soul (2001)
This hand-painted work presents the semblance of a dark brown wall, ripped open and pocked with yellowed visions of rooms and other interiors, gradually (and always occasionally) intersperced with multiply colored holes, revealing exteriors beyond the shifting facades of the "wall". The openings into and through the wall become larger, and then become smaller again (so small as to seem semblances of stars at times). Finally the enlargements take over the scene and eventually demolish all sense of "wall". This film is very inspired by the paintings of Gunther Forg, and with respect to St. John of the Cross, is a hand painted envisionment of holy depression.
poster
?
6.7
/9/
20
/1/

Divertimento (1997)
This, painted in the hospital while recovering from cancer surgery in 1996, is - it seems to me - very related to De Kooning's Alzheimer's paintings. The mind, here, is seeking a "blank" and/or holding fast to tendrils of meaning which are stripped so bare as to be purely reflective of flesh tissue and irregular strands of cells. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
poster
?
7.7
/29/
100
/1/

Panels for the Walls of Heaven (2002)
The last of Brakhage's longer works. Part of the "Vancouver Island" films. "Purple flashes are followed by a curtain of purple and blues, first seemingly static and then in motion. Close-ups of textures of paint evolve into flashes of jewel-like red, then more cascading blues and purples and white - 'falling,' seemingly, down from the top of the screen, at other times multi-directional bursts of rolling colors. Red, blue and yellow course through in an up-down motion, then blues and yellows enter from left and right in a complex medley of not solidly formed, but very vibrant pulsations of color, at times only slightly hinting at a solidity of "wallness" upon which the paint might exist. But it is a "wall" suffused with light." - Marilyn Brakhage
poster
?
6.0
/42/
10
/1/
52
/4/

The Harrowing (1993)
A hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to create varieties of tempo in mimic of sparking and molten rock.
poster
?
6.4
/22/
20
/1/
37
/4/

Lovesong 2 (2001)
LOVESONG 2 is a rapid recapitulation of the tactics of Lovesong, without the multiple rhythms of variable step-printing: it is a straight frame-to-frame 'run-through' of similar (albeit newly painted) images of love-making.


mdblist.com © 2020 | Contact | Reddit | Discord | API | Privacy Policy