''Mothlight'' is an

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...

, released in 1963. The film was created without the use of a

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with ...

Description

''Mothlight'' is a silent "collage film" that incorporates "real world elements."Elder, R. Bruce (1998) ''The films of Stan Brakhage in the American tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson, Wilfrid Laurier,'' Univ. Press, p389 Brakhage produced the film without the use of a camera,James, David E. (2002) ''Imagine nation: the American counterculture of the 1960s and '70s,'' Routledge, p285 using what he then described as "a whole new film ''technique''."MacDonald, Scott (2001) ''The garden in the machine: a field guide to independent films about place,'' University of California Press, p69 Brakhage collected

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

wings, flower petals, and blades of

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

, and pressed them between two strips of 16mm splicing tape.''"Mothlight" and Beyond,'' (2011) by Fred Camper
La Furia Umana, September 30, 2011 - Accessed June 3, 2013 The resulting assemblage was then contact-printed at a lab to allow projection in a cinema. The objects chosen were required to be thin and translucent, to permit the passage of light. Brakhage reused the technique to produce his later film, '' The Garden of Earthly Delights'' (1981). ''Mothlight'' has been described as boasting a "three-part musical structure."

Production

Brakhage was initially drawn to the idea of using

moths Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

in a film when he noticed many of them burning to death in a candle:

Here is a film that I made out of a deep grief. The grief is my business in a way, but the grief was helpful in squeezing the little film out of me, that I said "these crazy moths are flying into the candlelight, and burning themselves to death, and that's what's happening to me. I don't have enough money to make these films, and ... I'm not feeding my children properly, because of these damn films, you know. And I'm burning up here ... What can I do?" I'm feeling the full horror of some kind of immolation, in a way."Commentary by Stan Brakhage on ''By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 1'', taken from 2002 interview with Bruce Kawin

After spending some time following live moths with a camera, an exercise that proved fruitless, Brakhage instead turned his attention towards using dead moths:

"Over the lightbulbs there's all these dead moth wings, and I ... hate that. Such a sadness; there must surely be something to do with that. I tenderly picked them out and start pasting them onto a strip of film, to try to ... give them life again, to animate them again, to try to put them into some sort of life through the motion picture machine."

Reception

''Mothlight'' won awards at the 1964 Brussels International Film Festival, and the 1966 Spoleto Film Festival.Liz Faber, Helen Walters (2004) ''Animation unlimited: innovative short films since 1940,'' Laurence King Publishing James Peterson describes ''Mothlight'' as belonging "to a new class of films, those that direct attention away from the screen and to the physical object in the projector."Peterson, James (1994) ''Dreams of chaos, visions of order: understanding the American avante-garde cinema,'' Wayne State University Press, p81 Darragh O'Donoghue, writing for ''

Senses of Cinema ''Senses of Cinema'' is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, ''Senses of Cinema'' publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career ...

,'' praised the way Brakhage "evokes the moth not through cartoon mimicry, but by the fragile sensation of its movement, batting against the screen, hurtling in descent."''Mothlight'' (2004) by Darragh O'Donoghue
''Senses of Cinema,'' CTEQ Annotations, June 2004 - accessed November 17, 2010 Along with '' Window Water Baby Moving'' (1959), ''Mothlight'' remains one of Brakhage's best-known works,Maureen Furniss (2007) ''Art in motion: animation aesthetics,'' p44 and his most rented.MacDonald, Scott (2005) ''A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers,'' p62 It is currently available in the DVD collection ''By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 1'', released by

the Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...

.''By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 1'' listing
The Criterion Collection official website - accessed November 17, 2010

References

External links

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Mothlight
at

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mothlight 1960s avant-garde and experimental films 1963 films 1963 short films American silent short films Collage film Drawn-on-film animated films Films directed by Stan Brakhage Silent films in color 1960s American films

Description

Production

Reception

See also

References

External links