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Stan Brakhage: Passage Through A Ritual
Brakhage for the most part has resisted or eschewed the use of sound to accentuate the primacy of the visual and to preserve the integrity of the carefully considered visual rhythms of his silent ‘visual music’. Though music has been indispensable to Brakhage’s life and an important influence and model – throughout his own film descriptions one finds references to Bach, Haydn, Webern, Messiaen, Cage, and Boulez – across his nearly 400 works most are insistent upon and derive much of their power from being silent. This programme will begin with one of Brakhage’s earliest sound films, his fourth completed film, made in 1954 and concludes with one of his most recent sound films. The silent works on this programme provide more than just auditory breaks. Ephemeral Solidity is a hand-painted film of Hadynesque complexity of thematic variations on a totally visual (i.e. unmusical theme). The silent Riddle of Lumen is in a kind of call and response with elements of Passage through a Ritual. Riddle of Lumen was made in reply to Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, a counter reply came years later in the form of musical piece by Phillip Corner entitled