The Filmmaker as Visionary: Excerpts from an Interview with Stan Brakhage

After providing a brief introduction to Brakhage's prolific career, MacDonald interviews the legendary avant-garde filmmaker about four pivotal films: Anticipation of the Night (1958), the controversial film that established Brakhage's commitment to a new form of cinematic sight and threw the avant-garde film world into an uproar; the four-part Scenes from Under Childhood (1969-1970), one of Brakhage's most elaborate evocations of how the freedom of a baby's vision is lost as the child is acculturated into language; The Loom (1986), Brakhage's requiem for his remarkable marriage with Jane Collum Brakhage; and Commingled Containers(1997), a film made during the first moments of Brakhage's confrontation with bladder cancer. He died on March 9, 2003.