Stan Brakhage | The Untutored Eye

[@TheAtoZReviewBlog]

A video-essay about Brakhage is a breath of fresh air in the video-essay KZbin community. Thank you!

[@alphaalpacapack]

Woah, senpai noticed me. Love your content man.

[@stevencallen1153]

you probably dont care at all but does anybody know of a tool to log back into an instagram account?? I was dumb forgot the login password. I would appreciate any tricks you can give me

[@cainprince4669]

@Steven Callen instablaster =)

[@stevencallen1153]

@Cain Prince Thanks so much for your reply. I found the site through google and im trying it out atm. Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@stevencallen1153]

@Cain Prince it did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. I am so happy! Thanks so much you saved my account !

[@varoujanfroundjian4898]

Stan Brakhage has been my idol since I started watching abstract movies. And with this perspective I have a deeper understanding of his work. Thank You!

[@fromthepeanutgallery1084]

Love his search: Birth, sex, death, and God. Think most of us are searching for the same thing but he had the courage to say it.

[@jordanbottini9803]

This may be your most enlightening video yet! I've seen a few of Brakhage's films and this video shines a much-needed light on them.

[@alphaalpacapack]

Cheers comrade.

[@pqibkpq0o917kalj]

jordan bottini Much needed... Moth light

[@prismer]

One of my biggest influences. Great examination of an underappreciated genius.

[@alphaalpacapack]

Cheers, Maggie.

[@moeezS]

That outtake for Dante's Quartet because it's too "coherent" and "nameable", amazing.

[@taylorschofield9206]

Love Stan Brakhage, great to see a video essay on his work. Keep up the quality content!

[@alphaalpacapack]

Thanks!

[@bryanchu5379]

The closest we've ever gotten to "pure film"

[@BenBigg]

I loved this! Never seen a Brakhage film but I'm interested now.

[@alphaalpacapack]

I'd highly recommend checking out the Criterion Blu Ray box set if you're interested. My favourite release of theirs.

[@marcosgabrielfaria]

Man, your channel is awesome! Please keep doing this videos Cheers from Brazil

[@alexvaught106]

i love all of your videos, mate. keep adding nujabes to the scores

[@alphaalpacapack]

Will do. Thanks for the love.

[@pino2278]

Honestly, thank you.

[@MarcWebbFilm]

Unexpected Nujabes!

[@alphaalpacapack]

the best kind

[@realityisfake]

"photographing brine shrimp herded into a small space to get the meat quivering sense of it"

[@mayamura1]

thank ya for this

[@lostcowboy69]

Great video, going to cite the video in a paper I'm writing about Brakhage for film school. Thanks!

[@alphaalpacapack]

That's awesome.

[@julietmolz8839]

Nice essay. I however recently have been studying Brackhage's "Window Water Baby Moving," the film Stan made of his wife giving birth. I have to disagree after viewing that piece that Brackhage filmed with an untutored or unbiased childlike eye. Many aspects of the birth were subtly sexualized, I thought; the way his wife got into the bathtub, nude from behind; the way she bounced up and down during the birth, as if in sex; the look on her face as if caught between pain an ecstasy. It was not an untrue depiction of childbrith, but definitely a film true to a new father's experience, and not a new mother's. Love to know of your thoughts.

[@kasperskilbrei473]

Where can I find the graphics at 7:30? It's so mezmering

[@c.nelson3747]

I know it's been 3 years since you asked this, but that's actually a snippet of Brakhage's short film "Comingled Containers". There's plenty of good uploads of it online, and it's also been released on Blu-Ray by Criterion in their Brakhage anthology. The full thing's only a little over 2 minutes long, but it's one of the most soothing ways you could spend that time. Hope this helps!

[@kasperskilbrei473]

@@c.nelson3747 Thanks for the answer! I have been watching lots of his films since then and I actually got the anthology on blu-ray from my girlfriend a couple days ago☺️

[@bathwindow]

awesome video. thanx

[@notyoujustme2869]

this is fantastic.

[@alphaalpacapack]

thank you

[@StanleyWithFriends]

Brakhage is the greatest

[@carmemmartins8761]

very good!

[@michaelbailey7554]

Hi, where did you get the documentary footage of Brakhage? I'd be interested in seeing the full videos. thanks

[@alphaalpacapack]

There's a list of the doco's I used in the credits. Most of them you can find on youtube I think.

[@davidmehnert6206]

If I had ever been a collector of cells - but I’ve stopped collecting ANYTHING at this point in my life having moved on to burning, and the salting of old negatives, given the hate for my family and its heritage by people who have NO BUSINESS thinking it is theirs to take or steal - I’d prefer perhaps a Brakhage to Disney, thiugh both artists were formed in Kansas City, where I’m from, and from whence I take my leave bach to where I belong kzbin.info/www/bejne/sGWwgmp9r6ppfrs

[@mattfurer2387]

amazing video bro

[@deafunk7130]

what is that book he's reading?? anyone know?

[@brendanpr21]

Very well put together, thanks for sharing!

[@alphaalpacapack]

Thanks.

[@jameloberin8079]

Best

[@WaaDoku]

Not sure if I agree with the statement that he had "a very *clear* philosophy" after reading Metaphors on Vision myself because... what the heck is this scribbling man?? But I very much appreciated this video essay, it gives everything more shape and - sorry - order. I wish Brakhage would've written more on the Untutored Eye because he only mentions it twice in his book (in the first chapter which you cited and later in a letter to a friend where he refers to "the untutored eyes and ears") without going into further detail. I think the concepts of 'perception' and the inherent 'magic' of film are more at the core of at least his written works. I also heard in my film studies classes that his big filmtheoretical concept was the "Untutored Eye" but now that I'm actually reading his texts for a term paper... I don't see why every respected film studies professor is putting this hardly explained and vague concept in the centre of his entire body of work. I think Brakhage's films were actually for the most part clearly contradicting this concept of the "Untutored Eye", just look at his most famous works Window Water Baby Moving, The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, Dog Star Man, etc. They all have a narrative and depict their subjects very clearly (I think it has more to do with the "elimination of the object of fear by objectifying it"). I think the least "untutored" (i.e. most "tutored") film he ever made (that I've seen) is Stellar (1993). This film is so obviously depicting stars and galaxies, how is that an untutored, prenatal vision of reality? I don't know, I see a lot of contradiction in his works, which is probably on purpose as he wrote his theoretical texts as prose and also used ambiguous terms on purpose to keep his wording and meaning vague. Wish I could scribble in my term paper like him lol (don't get me wrong, I admire and adore Brakhage's works, I'm just confused by his "very clear" philosophy haha)

[@alphaalpacapack]

Yeah, I'll admit that a lot of this was based on secondary analysis and not Metaphors of Vision itself (since I didn't have access to the original text) and that there is probably a slant towards a certain interpretation of his work (i.e filtering it through Locke's tabula rasa concept).

[@WaaDoku]

Alpha-Alpaca-Pack Thanks for your reply! Yes, I very much agree that academics seems to pick out certain things they like about Brakhage's theoretical concepts and disregard the rest (which you can clearly see when you look at his most discussed and written about works in film studies canon which completely contradict the philosophy he laid out in Metaphors on Vision and which are overwhelmingly represented in most of his other works since 1961 like The Persian Series). But again, your video essay helped me a lot to get some order into his mess of a book and it was also interesting to hear about all those other similar concepts that already existed before Brakhage. Didn't learn one bit about that in film study classes lol. Anyways, thanks again and if you should ever feel bored on a Sunday: ia800602.us.archive.org/22/items/metaphorsonvisio00brak/metaphorsonvisio00brak.pdf (^full 2012 scan of Metaphors on Vision done by the Internet Archive. That's what I'm using for my paper.) P.S. sorry for my rambling in my first comment, I was writing my term paper while getting distracted (kinda) by KZbin and just wrote down all my thoughts and frustrations about what I just read lol

[@kuba7543]

In a nutshell: deconstruction of vision?

[@gingrsnap1951]

Yeeeeah my thoughts don’t look like that

[@gingrsnap1951]

If a baby doesn’t understand what color is called it still only sees grass and whatever shade it is same with a rainbow the colors don’t multiply or change

[@elektrozil9728]

Studied by Will Ferrell.

[@retter2critical]

Adding sound to Stan Brakhage's films in this video is completely misrepresenting and disrespectful of his work.

[@alphaalpacapack]

hmmm I'm not sure if I agree with that. You could make that argument for narrating or playing music over ANY film footage as well, unless you also consider that disrespectful?

[@retter2critical]

It clearly misrepresents the filmmaking in this case and In this specific instance, its a dumbing down of the material.

[@toastin131]

If you want to watch the real film, there are plenty of other links on KZbin that present them in their entirety. This video is obviously explanatory and is not trying to show the full experience. Do you also take issue with art museum posters that have a picture of a popular work with dates and names written over it?

[@WaaDoku]

Port Film Co-op You do know that Brakhage made sound films, right? Not all of his work was to be viewed mute. He even said in this video here that watching films without the sound of a film projector is appalling. And he loved music. Also, this is a video essay that explains Brakhage's films, it doesn't exhibit them. So I would also disagree with this statement. Unless you had good arguments for it.

[@sicknamebrah3494]

This was good til you started going post-modern and bringing hacks in like huxley talking about psuedopsychology. This video should've just been three minutes.