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Mothlight
They talk about
Stan Brakhage, and like Alcibiades he gave them something to talk about. The
very density of notion is, you would think, what the stuff of fame is made on,
to read the verbiage, and yet what actually takes place on the screen is rather
different. It reminds me of the Atlanta gallery director who claimed the locals
weren’t big on abstract art, while across town the Herbert Creecy retrospective
assembled from local collections was on.
What you see is a
rapid sequence of kinetic forms like shadows. Much of it is recognizably to do
with moths, and a great deal of it is like a sudden irruption of slide
preparations, as if you were being caught up with all your schoolwork over the
years. Brakhage’s capacities as a composer of rhythmic movements are matched by
the static layouts that whiz by, and the actual work (rather than the critic’s
sterile astonishment over technique) is an influential one.