The ''Arabic Numeral Series'', sometimes referred to as the ''Arabics'', is a series of 19 short

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

films completed by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage in 1981 and 1982. The ''Arabic Numeral Series'' gets its name from the fact that none of the films included in it have titles, instead opening with an arabic numeral. Brakhage produced another cycle, the '' Roman Numeral Series'', whose films all have

Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...

instead of titles, around the same time. All of the ''Arabics'' are silent and are intended to be projected at 18 frames per second. Writing in a 1997 introduction to a screening of the complete cycle, film critic

Fred Camper Fred may refer to: People * Fred (name), including a list of people and characters with the name Mononym * Fred (cartoonist) (1931–2013), pen name of Fred Othon Aristidès, French * Fred (footballer, born 1949) (1949–2022), Frederico Rodr ...

referred to the ''Arabics'' as being the "richest"Brakhage's Arabics, by Fred Camper
/ref> of the filmmaker's 1980s cycles, explaining: "With some exceptions, the ''Arabics'' take the idea of the void as their ground. That is, the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness, or occasionally against white, these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness. But the darkness is not 'night,' or even simply some more abstract absence of light, but a more profound vacuum: it represents a world stripped of all the coordinates of the known, an unmeasurable absence. ..These lushly sensual, pleasurable-to-view films are also terrifying: their unpredictability, continually enacting new dramas of surprise, alternatively swamps the viewer in light and leaves him adrift in darkness. "

Films

References

{{Stan Brakhage American film series American independent films Avant-garde and experimental film series Film series introduced in 1981 Films directed by Stan Brakhage