Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking »

ESSENTIAL BRAKHAGE gathers twenty-one manifestos, screening lectures, Q&A sessions, drawings, poems, shooting scenarios, stills, narrative scripts, and theoretical essays on the art of filmmaking written over the last five decades by one of the acknowledged masters of independent American cinema. Film annotations and a current bibliography are included.

Library Journal

Brakhage is celebrated as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker. In a career spanning 50 years, he has produced over 300 films, some only a few seconds long, others several hours in length. His best-known work, the multipart Dog Star Man (1962-64), was recently included in the Library of Congress National Film Registry of outstanding films. With this anthology, the publisher offers generous excerpts from two out-of-print Brakhage books, Metaphors on Vision and Brakhage Scrapbook, plus a sampling of recent writings. McPherson describes this collection as "an entry point to the viewing and study of the films," but some essays, lectures, manifestos, program notes, and annotations require much more background and context than is provided here, particularly for a younger generation unfamiliar with the work. While some of the writing is dated, Brakhage's advice to aspiring independent filmmakers retains interest, and notes on selected films will be useful for film society programmers and scholars. Recommended for large academic film collections. Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.