Mothlight

If I didn't read a bit after I watched it, and saw what he was trying to do, I would have not liked it. But now that I'm aware, I can appreciate it as something really different.

Another strange little experiment that works out quite well. Charming, like a film that an exceptionally bright child might make in his extended-learning class in sixth grade

Taking the wings of moths that had burned themselves to death in a candle, Brakhage created a camera-less strip of film that plays like an hallucinatory head rush. If you stare really closely and concentrate, it becomes hypnotic. It may look like 3 minutes of kinetic visual chaos - and it is that - but there's something profound about experiencing the transformation of death into life.

Whatever Stan, any possible beauty or insight that could be derived from the concept is negated by the blistering speed at which the images are thrown at you.

HOLY FUCK SO MANY TRUTHS ARE REVEALED TO ME HERE.

Okay...

I'm glad this exists. The whole time I was watching (and perhaps some doc or interview somewhere illuminates this) I was wondering where he got the moths. Did he just have bugs laying around or did he go out at night with a flashlight and his little bug net to snag the choicest, most aesthetically pleasing moths? Now I'm imagining a moth casting couch and my mind is in shambles. Heady stuff, man

It made me feel sad about death. Cinema is cool.

One of Brakhage's most inventive films. The technique alone is fascinating to me. Visually compelling and unique.

Film in its purest expression often takes abstract manifestations. Mothlight is an alternate universe, a completely alien visual landscape from the perspective of a moth during its entire life cycle. There's enough symbolic content in its brief four minutes that eclipses a handful of conventional feature lengths. Each frame is so meticulous, and passes by with such speed and intensity, that it's an overwhelming experience, spellbinding as it is beautiful.

Hmm. Well, the rapid editing makes it feel shorter than it is, but it seems like the choice of subject matter is ultimately irrelevant. Fine to watch but forgettable.

Groundbreaking idea for a film that is executed well, but a bit overlong and too fast-paced for me to really perceive all the experiments with this idea.

Holy fuck, I feel dizzy...

Wow that's captivating. Brakhage made this four minute short by attaching plants, insects and such to filmstrip (meaning it was actually made without a camera). The result is an intense, constantly changing and strangely beautiful film that had me completely spellbound.

I guess the novelty is amusing? Honestly, a bunch of shifting close ups on moth parts doesn't exactly enthrall me even if the effort to make it is kind of interesting.

Fairly neat, but when the title popped up on-screen with the reel clacking all I could think about was Man Getting Hit By Football. Hans Moleman shits on Stan Brakhage.

That is so organic... Probably what Miuccia Prada's subconscious looks like when she's designing a new plant-print themed collection. Anyway, it's so pretty and captivating. It's 4 minutes long but it felt like only half a minute. It should've been an hour.

To confine this piece to any particular terminological label within the film planes' would be unmistakably limiting. With full-force, Brakhage thrusts us onto the lenses of an utterly alien universe, sucking us into a vacuum of a stirring earthen fury, begetting symbolic flashes of a far more organic existence. Illuminating the ancient beginnings of our early Devonian ancestors, he introduces a peerless enunciation, a first-hand perspective of etymological Science and free-form Art.

i loved richard gear in this

Nope.

An assault of abstract (and not terribly interesting) images, with occasional glimpses of identifiable natural beauty.

Don't watch on Youtube.

Beautiful, dancing interplay of machine and nature. I really love when Brakhage toys with the medium like this. Although there are films of his that I like more as a whole, this is what I generally look to him for.

i've always found it rather difficult to be that impressed by brakhage. this one is not too bad, i think, probably because it's got a central motif.

The editing made me feel nauseous

Experimental in the most fundamental sense. Not even made with a camera. It draws attention to the illusions created by our persistence of vision and to the act of projecting a film. Palpably material and organic, it seems incomplete without the accompanying rattle and hum of a projector.

Psychedelic.

981

The story behind the actual method of how this is made is pretty interesting, but unfortunately it's more interesting than the film itself, which basically presents like a three minute moving abstract painting. Kind of cool how he made it, but also left me wondering why bother. It seems like a lot of effort for very little gain. But it's on the TSPDT 1000 list so I guess some people like it. Not me. At least it's only a few minutes.

No camera was used to make this short film; legs, wings and other parts of butterflies were glued directly on the filmstrip. / "What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black." - Stan Brakhage

That is so organic... Probably what Miuccia Prada's subconscious looks like when she's designing a new plant-print themed collection.

n.b. Viewed on YouTube, lol.

Not impressed me.