NMED 3850 Experimental Film Production

NMED 3850 Today’s Class… How to Write An Artist Statement Brakhage

NMED 3850 Course Outline Correction Artist Statement Assignment5% Students will be required to write, edit and submit an artist statement of words which offers insight into creative intention and most importantly critical context for the approach to experimental composition. Due September 15th

NMED 3850 Artist Statement Is intended to give an artist’s audience insight into his or her creative intent and to provide some context for the reading of the work. It is different from a bio.

NMED 3850 Artist Statement You MUST: 1.Accept that you are an artist 2.Write in the third person 3.Choose your words Consider non-cinematic forms of art and artists that inform your choices as an artist. –There may be art forms that inspire you –There may be art forms to which you feel compelled to respond –What do you feel passionately about in the world? –What memories or experiences help to form your interests as an artist? Articulate the method in your “experimental madness”

NMED 3850 Stan Brakhage (January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American non-narrative filmmaker. He is one of the best, if not the best known and most important of avant-garde filmmakers. He is regarded as one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century. He produced over 400 films in his lifetime. Brakhage's films are usually silent and lack a traditional narrative, being more analogous to visual poetry than to prose story-telling. He often referred to them as "visual music" or "moving visual thinking." His films range in length from just a few seconds to several hours, but most last between two or three minutes and one hour. He frequently hand-painted the film or scratched the image directly into the film emulsion, and sometimes used collage techniques.

NMED 3850 Stan Brakhage Brakhage's great subject was light itself. His great desire was to make cinema equal to the other arts by using that which was uniquely cinematic — by organizing light in the time and space of the projected image — in a way that would be worthy, structurally and aesthetically, of the poetry, painting, and music that most inspired him. Brakhage was meticulous in the organization of the detail of his work. The intricacy with which he used composition and color and texture and rhythm, resulted in films that virtually demand multiple viewings.

NMED 3850 Watch Brakhage and take notes…don’t just listen. Take notes about: –what defines experimental film to those interviewed –Brakhage’s techniques – Brakhage’s social commentary (i.e. politics and art) –how the artist describes what he does in his own words